


Pretty Sisters Lovely Girls

by gul



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-09
Updated: 2016-08-28
Packaged: 2018-07-22 13:59:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 28,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7441924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gul/pseuds/gul
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sandor Clegane and Arya Stark return to Winterfell and to Sansa Stark. They are all of them killers now.</p><p>UPDATE: Chapter 5. Sandor inflicts a kiss, and receives one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Little wolf

When the Stark girl meets Sandor Clegane again, he is on his way to check a trap.

 The Riverlands are cold and wet and rambling, all lakes and rivers and terrible green. A strange in-between place with few solid boundaries like mountains between these lands and its neighbours. There are few hard edges between land and water, sometimes. In walking he once again finds himself in a strange liminal space of swamp and bog. He suspects if he takes a wrong step he might sink, although he moves more lightly now, without the armour.

 More carefully, too, with his leg, knit and scarred back together from shattered pieces.

 In this strange space and in the evening mist, the man who was once the Hound once again does not completely recognise himself. He can hear the rabbit struggling in the snare. He feels, as he often does these days now that the tides of rage have receded, that he misses something he never had.

 Sandor feels something sharp against his back and he straightens.

  _Goes to show what wallowing in memory gets you._

 Before he can counter, his assailant speaks.

 “Didn’t I say I’d put a sword through your eye,” she says, and he remembers that curt little voice, tense and full of triumph, and it makes more sense he didn’t hear her.

 He turns around. The littlest Stark bitch. The slim dirty blade of a little girl, with her little Needle, needling him. Arya readjusts the blade, pressing her child’s sword against where his heart lay, as he had taught her some years before. He has no armour, not anymore, but it doesn’t even pierce the fabric. She doesn’t mean it to.

 “You had your chance, girl,” he says, pushes the sword away. She has grown up but she is still not much taller than the little thing who could not kill him.

 Arya withdraws and sheaths her sword, not looking at him, twisting her lips to hide her small bright grin.

 “You’re not on my list, anyways,” she informs him. “Since you already died.”

 “Disappointed to see me then, is that it?” His voice is wry; his stance relaxed.

 Sandor waits for her sharp little words which were all she used to be able to wield against him, and he waits to laugh at her with scorn and then respond in kind. He leans to slit the trapped rabbit’s throat and tie it with the others.

 Arya waits for him to empty the trap and stand. She looks up at him, suddenly solemn, her wide grey eyes only sad.“No.”

 There are birds somewhere above them, lilting little tunes to one another. The air is already turning colder and the world more dim. Sandor sighs. Before he can stop himself he is muttering that it would be best if she came back with him to eat and rest, so no hunter in the woods mistook her ragged self for some mad matted wolf after their stock or children.

 She scoffs, but agrees; she can get news of her family, perhaps. She laughs when she hears he has joined with the Brotherhood, that absurd nettling cackle Sandor remembers—and she assures him that Beric Dondarrion and Thoros are also no longer on her list.

 As they walk, she gathers firewood along with him. Sandor looks at her. She has grown—she is grown, now. She is lovely and grim under the dirt of travel, a winter storm of a girl all white and grey and black. Frost and steel. Not as different from her sister now, though, as she might like to think.

 “I wondered what had happened to you,” was all he could say, his voice rough. That lonely hurting child he had carried. He had hurt with her. He had hurt her himself.

 She pauses a long time. “I went far away.” Her voice has a cold strained quality and she shifts the sticks in her grasp to push her black hair back.

 “Did you find your _real_ killer you always talked so much about?”

 Her jaw tenses. “Yes.”

 Sandor nods to Needle. “Shit killer, then; didn’t even give you a proper weapon.”

 “He did. Lots of them. I preferred this one. But I kept some others.”

 “What happened?” What happened to you, that you became like this, a little highborn girl turned so hard and harsh. But he does not need to ask—he knows what does this to a person because of himself.

 “We…we _parted ways_.”

 “You leave him for dead too?” he snaps, and regrets it because Arya’s shoulders jerk like he has struck her in the back. But he doesn’t take it back.

 “He was already dead.”

 She cocks her head. “I’m _not sorry_ I left you, you know.”

 “I’m not sorry either. You were nothing but an expensive pain in the ass. I was glad to be rid of you. Now look where I am because of you,” he rasps. And he reaches out with his long arm and tousled her hair and she smiles, reaching up to grab his broad calloused hand to remove it but holding on a little long.

 Her little hand is smooth and cool; her grip tight.

 “I hate your new beard,” she volunteers, finally pushing him away.

 “Good,” he says, meaning it, because for a moment no time has passed at all, and they keep walking.

 

*******

 

The Hound had offered once to take a pretty girl to Winterfell—maybe he had even meant it, though the flames had burned so high that night he might have said anything. But life is strange and now when Sandor Clegane makes his way there he has not the pretty girl, but her pretty sister.

 The night they met again, Sandor and Arya sat around the campfire with Dondarrion, Thoros, and a few other Brotherhood members. They ate and they spoke. The men give the young woman wide berth; she seems to sit alone. They are amused at this lovely highborn lady-gone-renegade slouched on the ground and pulling apart rabbit meat with them. Not nearly so amused, though, as by Arya’s recounting of her travels with the Hound, and Sandor scowls and busies himself with his food while she speaks and they laugh. Only occasionally does he correct her or laugh himself at her penchant for drama.

 The story ends when Arya leaves the Hound. She becomes quiet after that.

 Another spot of awkwardness, when they discuss the spectacular death of Walder Frey—how someone fed his own sons to him and slit his throat. The men laugh, but Arya only smiles into the fire until she catches Sandor’s hard gaze—and then she laughs too.

 He wonders if he should confront her later, but realises he does not need to.

 He knows.

 _Poor stupid mad child_. She would end up like scorched and broken like him, surely.

 It is gods-damned Thoros who breaks the silence after, as ever, hunched over his cup of wine and smiling.

 It is fortunate they ran into one another, Thoros says to her, as the Brotherhood was soon to make their way to the Wall to pledge their assistance to the new King in the North to help fight what was coming for them all. Arya, though, should make her way back to Winterfell, where her sister Sansa and brother Jon were.

 At the mention of her siblings, Arya stops scowling at Sandor’s careless gluttony and turns to Thoros.

 “They are both alive?”

 He grins, only slightly smug. “Alive and in Winterfell. You might carry a message there for us, of our intentions. We’ll send some Brothers with you for safety.”

 She looks at them in disbelief. “I’m fine on my own,” she says, slowly, as if they are stupid.

 “That may be,” Dondarrion says. “But it would put our minds at rest that the corpse of Arya Stark wouldn’t be found inside our territory.”

 “I’m very serious.”

 “Please don’t make us run after you again, my Lady.”

Arya examines her food, picking and peeling at her meat but not eating it. She sneers at the oily slick of fat on her fingers. The fire dances in her light eyes, shines off her dark hair making it look aflame itself although there is nothing of her sister in her face. Then she looks up, jerks her head at Clegane.

 “ _He_ should come with me, then.”

 Sandor coughs. Thoros laughs; Dondarrion frowns.

 “Clegane?” Thoros says. “You miss him that much, do you?”

 “Sending him too would be a nice gesture of goodwill. He helped my sister in King’s Landing. Or was that a lie?” She raises her eyebrow at Sandor.

 “No, stupid girl, _it wasn’t a lie_ ,” he snarls, and she grins.

 “Is this true, Clegane?” Dondarrion asks. He is slower to antagonise than Thoros. “Would Lady Stark welcome your aid at Winterfell?”

 “Can’t imagine she would,” he says.

 “All the same,” Arya said. “Him or no one. Trust me, if you couldn’t catch me last time, you definitely couldn’t now.”

 Sandor curses at the girl, at the others’ looks and barely concealed mirth, and he nods.

 “She'll be a lady now, you know. You’ll have to stop calling her stupid girl,” Thoros says, raising his glass to the new pair.

 “And bitch,” Arya pipes up. “And little fool.”

 “Shut up,” he says, and takes a long drink himself, and then another, for he thought of Sansa, and how had hoped he would never see the little bird again because he had not saved her in the end. Because a part of him had never wanted to—he had wanted to take her for himself.

 He refills his cup, and then Arya’s who is holding hers out to him expectantly, cursing again.

 

***

 

Sandor and Arya leave the next day with a long letter on dirty parchment from Thoros which Arya immediately reads once they are out of sight. They settle into a traveling rhythm more quickly than either would have guessed. This time they both have horses, which Sandor is grateful for. He did not relish sharing his horse, or his limbs falling asleep, or listening to her complaining. He also realises that while in his head he thinks of Arya Stark as nothing more than an exasperating child, she is now grown—and he did not want to risk riding with a beautiful young woman on his lap for weeks.

 She calls him Hound or, rarely, Clegane. He calls her little wolf, little lady.

 The wet roads grow harder and colder and the trees taller and darker; soon they see snow. They see their horses breath and their own breath in front of them like smoke. Arya uses gold to buy warmer clothes for them both and he thanks her gruffly, saying he will take it as payment for being her escort.

 At his encouragement (so he doesn’t have to face her omnipresent questions and opinions) she talks about Winterfell, about Jon. She doesn’t bring up Sansa. Neither does he, until Arya begins to point out landmarks she recognises, with more than a little awe, and she brings up a memory of Sansa when they were on the road together and she was mooning over a knight. But she stops, mid-anecdote.When she speaks again it is about the food at inns in Westeros.

 It snows lightly that night, whirling flakes of cold that prick their skin before the fire is started. Sandor brings up Sansa to her later, around the campfire, after their meal is done and they are cleaning. “Why are you so worried about seeing your sister?”

 “Why are _you_?” she shoots back. “Not one question about her, and she was the Stark you knew best.”

 “You’ve been keeping track of that, have you?”

 “Of course. What a man doesn’t say can teach a girl just as much as what he does say.” The way she says it, the strange intonation—she believes it, but she is also parroting whether she knows it or not.

 “Who taught you _that_ nonsense?”

 “No one did. Well? Answer me.”

He sighs, and sits, as Arya continues to clean. He didn’t note until later how she didn’t complain at the unfair division of labor because she had wanted information from him.

 Sandor had only ever been protecting Arya. Watching out for her. He hadn’t wanted anything from her but for her to shut up and her relations to pay him—at least at first. After a while, he had admittedly grown fond of her. But no, he didn’t want anything from Arya Stark.

 Not even something as innocuous as a song.

 He had wanted that and more, from Sansa. And Sansa knew this. She might have gone with him, if he had been a better man, if he had been better than a dog that night, frightened and ravening, hungry for her.

 He might have saved her.

 Neither Sandor nor, he guessed, Arya, had last parted with Sansa on exactly good terms. Arya listens to his story of the Blackwater with a blank face, working slowly. Sandor recounts what happened that night to the younger Stark girl but does not tell her everything, of course, does not recount his lust and fear and need and how everything melted away but her pretty sister, and thinking about sparing her what no one spared him. Thinking of worse things, too.

“If you knew Sansa was in trouble when you left, why didn’t you take her with you?” she asks.

“I asked her to. She said no.” 

Arya’s eyes widen briefly as she understands what he is not offering her.

 "She probably would have said the same to me, to be honest,” she blurts, uncharacteristically kind. “I was terrible to her. Although she was pretty terrible to me. We didn’t get along.”

 “What would you do, steal her dolls?”

 “Yeah, and cover them in meat and feed them to the dogs. Embarrass her in front of men she thought were handsome, which to be honest was pretty much anyone.”

 He shifted at the word _handsome_ , and she rushes on.

 “Among other things. Lots of other things. Put sheep shit in her mattress. Spill food on her embroidery. I can’t even remember everything.”

 “You little shit,” he says, not without affection.

 “Yeah. Although a lot of it was to get back at her for telling on me, and lying to me, and I don’t know. Thinking she was better than me.” Arya wasn’t smiling. “I was very little then. I wonder if she’ll be happy to see me…will she be happy to see you?”

 “Doesn’t really matter, does it.”

 “No, it doesn’t. You’ve changed, anyway. She might not even recognise you, if it wasn’t for your u—your face.”

 “Changed _how_? What are you talking about.”

 She shrugged. “I dunno,” she lies. “You’ve stopped always trying to scare me, for one.”

 “That’s because I’m tired.”

 She shrugs again.

 When she finishes her task, Arya sits near him, a little further from the fire than she usually preferred. They both look into it; it is a fading sputtering thing that seems completely absurd against the breathless expanse of cold and dark that surrounds them.

 “Is that why you protected me? Because of her?” Arya asks, finally. Her voice seems heavy.

 “I told you, girl. I wanted the money.”

 She says nothing.

 “No,” he tells her, and means it. “It wasn’t. Now be useful and go get some more wood,” he orders her. She rolls her eyes, but obeys him.

 He sees to the horses for the night as she unpacks the bedrolls. She sets them up perpendicular to each other, with the heads together. When he wakes in the night, she is asleep. Needle is cradled against her, held tight by her sword-arm. But her other arm is outstretched and her fingers rest lightly on his shoulder, and her cheeks are damp although there has been no snow or rain.

 Sandor knows nothing of comfort or ease. Especially not when it comes to young women. He rises; he tucks her hand in, makes sure her cloak she uses as a blanket covers her completely.

 Of course, she has woken up at his touch.

 “Sansa is…well, an idiot, Sandor,” Arya mumbles, pulling her cloak tighter, and he curses in surprise. “Like you. But she’ll be happy to see you, I’m sure. And me too. I hope.”

 “Get some fucking rest,” he says, but she is asleep again long before he is.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear this is going to be a primarily Sansa/Sandor story, but I lost a slight bit of control and now there is a plot and other relationships.


	2. Little bird

 

They are in Stark country now, Sandor Clegane and Arya Stark. Though Arya is a winter’s child, she only remembers summer, and Sandor does not fail to note her uncertainty as she leads the way on her chestnut horse, the only splash of warmth in an increasingly desolate landscape.

 His own dirty white mount fits in far better in this land of stone and steel and snow, of greys and blues and blacks. While Arya hides her wonder at the season’s change with bravado, Sandor is satisfied at how the land looks: how even in daytime the sky is a strange frozen blue dusk, and how the cold creeps in under his coats. The Starks he knows are harsh, lovely, foolish and dangerous things, and could only come from such a country.

 At a tavern at a fork in the road, Arya slows to fall beside him.

 “We’re very close,” she says, “but we might as well stop. Get some fresh food and a drink.”

 “Ask for directions?” he says, amused.

 She nods. “Yes, that’s probably best for cover anyway. I don’t want to be recognised.”

 He laughs, and she cannot hide the flash of irritation that twists her lip.

 The tavern is warm and cozy, the ale better than anything that remained to them. Sandor relishes the prickle in his extremities as full warmth returns. He does the talking, as he has been doing since they left the Riverlands. Arya hangs behind him, eyes cast down, a wayward daughter or wife or sister. It always depends on if she is asked after, and by whom, and how. Only when their food and drink is served does she quietly sit beside him.

 He gets directions easily; he is large and frightening and difficult to turn down. He gets more troubling news as well—what the Boltons were, what became of them, and some leering intimations from a stablemate at how Lady Bolton suffered at the hands of their lord bastard. He hears Arya’s sharp intake of breath beside him, feels her shift, and he leans to stamp on her foot to quiet her.

 “What’s your name,” he asks the man. Sandor knows his cool dark gaze and the way his teeth bare when he smiles and twists his scarred face will unsettle the man enough to answer him. No, it is not often bad to be frightening.

 “Brenn,” the man says. He has lank red hair and fear in his watery eyes.

 Sandor finishes his ale, drinking it down all at once. “Many thanks, Brenn.” He rises, and leaves, Arya scurrying behind him.

 “Why’d you ask his name,” Arya hisses at him as they mount their horses and spur them back onto the trail.

 He bares his teeth again. “Thought you’d might like to know.”

 “ _Why_.”

 “ _I don’t know,_ girl. In case you’d like to banish his family when you return to your precious family’s seat of power.”

 She bites her lip. He smiles genuinely now, at her evident discomfort and unwillingness to admit why—that she is afraid he knows more than he is telling.

 “That’s all?”

 “Fuck’s sake, little wolf, settle down. You heard him. We’re close. We’ll be to your lordly siblings by nightfall. You can dream about sticking blades in his skull the whole way there.”

 She curses and spurs her horse on ahead, and he laughs.

 But tormenting Arya only helps so much. As they draw closer to Winterfell, Sandor also feels tense and taut and irritable, a bowstring drawn too long. Perhaps her discomfort is catching.

 He resents also that he is looking forward to the end of their journey. He has lived his whole life without ever expecting anything good to happen, so why would it start now?

 And yet here he was with this stupid girl who still believed in her black little heart a person could be strong enough that nothing could ever hurt them again. She didn’t know that the only people with nothing to hurt had nothing to lose—you would have to be no one at all.

 Or, he thought, looking at her straight figure ahead of him, maybe she knew it all too well.

 Her pretty sister probably knew it even better, now, and at that thought he curses to himself. Poor little bird. At least it wasn’t him that hurt her.

 Arya is almost silent the rest of the journey, chin up and proud, and it is he that must remind her to water their horses when they pass by a path leading to a stream.

 They dismount and tie their horses to small trees jutting like bones at the bank. The stream is wide and clear, gurgling as it churns over grey rock. Arya turns to redistribute weight in her quick, curt, quiet movements irritate him.

 “What are you gonna tell your brother and sister about where you’ve been?” he taunts.

 She sneers, but doesn’t look up. “Why the concern? Worried I’m gonna get you hanged for kidnapping?

 “The way I see it, I’m just finishing what I set off to do in the first place—getting you back to your family.”

 “Oh, so very _kind_ of you, Ser.” She turns and curtsies sarcastically.

 “Almost dying to protect you, too.”

 “Yes,” she says, folding her arms, her face solemn now. “That’s very romantic, isn’t it.”

 Seeing his face, she breaks and cackles. “Not to _me_ you great idiot. You could spin that story very nicely, you know, for my poor sister,” she says, leering.

 He leers back. “You _really_ don’t have a good story, do you?”

 She rolls her eyes. “I’ll tell them the truth. I ran away to Braavos and joined a mummer’s troupe.”

 “The fuck you did.”

 She frowned. “Why not?”

 He leans against a tree. “All right. Why the fuck did you go all the way to Braavos to play dress-up?”

 “Oh, that’s easy. You got yourself killed near the Narrow Sea after you kidnapped and tried to ransom me, very unsuccessfully.”

 “Not my fault no one wanted you.”

 “I wanted to escape the King’s Men so I took your silver and took the next ship I could find to the Free Cities, which ended up being Braavos.”

 She kept talking, kept weaving a false life lived in the colour and clatter and canals of the free city. The girl wove a convincing tale; if he didn’t know her, he might have believed it.

 Since they were both preoccupied with one another, they didn’t see the ragged men approach until they had the pair cornered against the river.

 Four of them, that he could see, blocking any quick exit. Ragged Bolton colours, swords that had seen better days. Deserters, no doubt, or survivors. Sandor cursed. The starving cunts were gonna make him work for it, weren’t they.

 “Give us everything you have, and we might let you live,” the man closest snarled. Sandor had seen his kind a thousand times before, the aching hangovers of wars they rarely chose. Ghosts who could never go home. They were only a little dangerous, but they were also very desperate.

 Fucking _Boltons_ , too.

 “Throw your weapons down, both of you,” another says.

 Sandor jutted his jaw, smiled, stepped forward with an exaggerated limp. His hair fell into his face, covering his scars. Behind him, the stream rushed and his horse whickered. “Tell you what,” he says.

 “Your weapons!”

 “All right,” he says, and throws down his sword (which Arya has named variously, throughout the journey, Cunt, Dogtooth, Why Hound Has No Friends, Ripper, and, lastly and rather prosaically, Sword); he nods and Arya throws down Needle.

 “Listen,” Sandor says. “I’ll give you what food and silver I have—and I’ll give you the girl. She don’t eat too much and you can get good coin for her when you’re done with her.”

 Arya cries out in shock and in fear. “Gregor, no!” she cries.

 There, he had to keep from hitting her himself.

 The man at the front looks at his companions, nods, and steps forward.

 Sandor had just planned to get him closer—Arya as usual has anticipated him and dove in. She rolled forward with a dagger produced out of nowhere, stabbing the man in the inner thigh and rolling out of the way before he could react. The man cries out and falls to his knees; blood is gushing in great red spurts onto the frozen dirt. She had hit his artery. He has a few minutes to live. It was neatly done too, especially for the girl who used to fall over dancing with her sword.

 The other men yell and move forward.

 An arrow hits near Arya and Sandor leaps to grab the bleeding man by his neck. He holds him up, catching the next arrow and the next in the man's back. The man on Sandor’s right pauses as he approaches Sandor; he is terrified by this.

 Sandor turns to Arya, still holding up the dying man as a shield from the archer for both of them—but the girl has already killed one, and the third was on the ground sputtering with a throwing blade in his neck.

 Sandor throws the dying man down, takes his axe from his horse, and dispatches the last one in the throat before the the man even breaks from his terrified trance.

 When he turns back to the girl, an archer falls from the tree with knives in his arm, chest, and eye. Arya pulls them out, cleaning them on her clothes, grinning, looking down feral and lustful at her kills.

 Even as he feels a strange pride in her, when he sees her face Sandor suddenly feels so weary.

  _Poor little broken wolf_.

 “Mummer’s troupe my ass,” he spits, so she does not see his sadness, and turns to tend to the horses, who are spooked but have seen worse.

 “These fuckers are heavy,” she says.“Help me pull them off the path for the wolves.”

 He helps them drag them off; she is quick and strong but small, and she struggles with even one in what remained of his Bolton armour. Sandor makes short work of the other four.

 “You better work on your fucking story,” he rasps, as she sighs and catches her breath. “And wipe all the blood off yourself before we get there.”

 “Fine,” she says, cocking her head and looking him over. “Then you should trim your terrible beard.” She tosses him a slim razor from a pocket on her tunic.

 He catches it with a curse.

 They both obey the other, both scowling.

 While he shaves at the stream, she changes and washes, yelling at him to grab some new clothes from her pack; she picked up something for him earlier, so he wouldn’t stink up her home when they got there. Taking great pains not to catch a glance of her, he finds new clothes for a man his size in one of her packs.

 Sandor is grateful. He also chooses to express this through silence.

 “All right?” she finally says, cavalier and uncaring, turning to him. She is still wearing a tunic and trousers and boots, but in the dark jewel colors her mother had worn—fine clothing. Her face is clean; her hair pulled back.

 She is a lovely girl. He wondered who has told her this, if anyone. He wondered how telling her went for them.

 “How should I know,” he growls. “At least you don’t have blood on you and you’re wearing real clothes.”

 She nods and smiles, satisfied. “Good. You look all right too.”

 “Fuck _off_.”

 It is long past nightfall when they arrive but neither makes any suggestion of stopping.

 He remembers Winterfell as nothing too grand, but Arya lets out a little gasp when it rises into sight, black and stark against the snow.

 “There we are, girl,” he says quietly. “You're home.” It had not improved upon his absence. Winterfell in all the moonlight was a looming dark thing moonlight; but he could still see how it could mean safety and home to small Northern girls who thought such things existed.

 "Don’t tell them, Sandor,” she says in a small voice.

 “I won’t, little wolf,” he says gruffly, not needing to ask what she meant—do not tell her family of the wretched lustful lethal little killer she had become. “Maybe you’ll be a good girl then for once and leave out all the times I knocked you out and carried you off.”

 “Maybe _some_ of them.” She laughs, but nervously.

 The watcher at the gates calls out to them. He asks them to identify themselves. Sandor looks to Arya. The white winter moonlight in the too-clear sky is far too revealing; she has tears in her eyes, and her lip trembles, and only then does he wish they only had one horse so he could whisper some teasing insult to her to ease her pain.

 “Arya Stark,” she says, “and…her traveling companion,” she adds.

 But the gates are opening for them already.

 

*******

 

Sandor had heard, of course, that Winterfell had been sacked, but the fact that it would be in any way damaged and crumbling had not quite occurred to him till Arya made a soft sound of dismay. Still, it had kept its bones all right, and if the wretched girl's sweet siblings could keep a hold on it for any amount of time, she might see it restored still.

 The gates slam closed behind them. Because of the lateness of the hour there are few people on the road in, and they both dismount and wait for the approaching guard. Arya pauses and looks around, catching the gaze of a woman. Before the guards can meet them the woman is dropping what she is holding and almost running to her—she embraces the girl, she is crying. Sandor catches the Arya’s eye, raises an eyebrow at her. It is clear from her pained face that she does not remember the woman even though she wishes to.

 “Get Lady Sansa,” he hears the woman say, and the guard is sent off running.

 He has rarely seen Arya at such a loss, and before he thinks better of it he pulls Arya away, saying the lady is exhausted and would just like to see her siblings tonight.The woman—an old servant of the Stark family, evidently—nods, says she understands. She touches his arm and tells her to follow him, that others will take care of the horses.

 She only looks briefly troubled when she gets a better look at his face up close.

 As the woman leads them through the roads and around the walls to the centre of the hold, he lets his dark hair fall over the right side of his face.Arya briefly closes her hand around his arm, and he has the presence of mind to tuck her under it for a moment, squeezing her tense shoulder, before falling back and letting her lead the way herself.

 They reach the courtyard and there is a woman walking out of what looks to be the main keep.

 He almost doesn’t recognise her at first—not in the dark, not until she begins to run toward them. She is wearing a pale sleeping shift with only a fur drawn over it against the cold. Her little white feet are bare in the mud and the frost, and her loose hair gleams red and gold in the torchlight.

 Sansa Stark.

 She has grown too—she is tall, now, curved and slender. She is grown.

 She is so very beautiful Sandor must remind himself to breathe, and the air is sharp and cold in his chest like blades.

 “Arya?” the woman asks when she reaches , her steps slowing. She has not yet noticed Sandor. He steps back in the dark, behind the small group of people gathering. With his height and his face he did not begin to blend in, but Sansa’s attention was all on the smaller woman with dark hair. Her littlest sister. “Arya—is that you?”

 “Sansa—I’m here, it’s me, I’ve come back,” Arya says, quietly.

 Sansa lets out a strangled cry; she leaps to clutch her sister to her, with tears on her face. Arya stands still and she is silent, although there are tears on her face too that stream down when she closes her eyes. She has tried to give up her old life, Arya Stark, Sandor knows, but she cannot.

 Sansa kisses the top of her head, and then Arya hugs her back, lightly.

 “I’m so sorry,” Sansa says, although Sandor could not imagine for what. But Arya murmurs an apology back, into her sister’s long shining hair.

 Sansa finally pulls back to cup her sister’s face, brush back her hair. “You’re not hurt? You’re all right? Oh, look how beautiful you are! What have you been doing? Where have you been?”

 “Far and away,” she says, and Sansa laughs.

 “For _that_ , at least, I am very happy!”

 Arya looks away, looks back at her sister. “Um. Where is Jon?”

 Sansa steps back, and Sandor sees her shoulders slump. He remembers what Arya had told him of Sansa many years ago—that Sansa was always the one that did not fit in with the rest of her siblings. The tender dreamy lovely one, closer to her friends than her family, taking the most from their Tully side.

 Sandor knows that even very clever children do not see everything though, and the Sansa he sees now, steeled against sadness and cold and loss, is stronger than her sister. A red rose in snow, he thinks, and hates himself for it.

 Sansa manages to smile, still warm. “He is away, speaking to his new bannermen. It is not so settled here as we should like. He is safe, though, our new King in the North, and he’ll be back soon.”

 Arya nods. If she senses something in her sister’s words she does not say it. Sansa smiles again, and she is not a rose at all.

 To him she is flame.

 He rarely has feeling in the right side of his face but at the thought pain snarls through his nerves like burning lace. Sandor rubs his hand over his hated scars.

 “How did you find your way home?” Sansa asks.

 “Sandor Clegane brought me,” Arya said, which is not precisely true—not true at all, in fact. Arya gestures back to him, and Sansa follows to find him in the crowd.

 Her face is unreadable. She straightens and walks toward him.

  _I’ll make you sing for me_ , he had said to her. Many times.

  _I’ll keep you safe_ , he had said to her.

 Only once.

 He steels himself at her approach, for her courtesy, her disdain, for her false pity. He feels his jaw tense; he cannot meet her blue blue eyes.

 Sansa sighs, and she leaps forward to embrace him, her arms tight around him and her face buried in his chest

 It was the first time he had ever held her. It was delicious, her slender frame, her softness, her warmth, how she trembled against him in cold and in joy. His precious thing; only his, for this moment.

 “Hello, little bird,” he breathes.

 “You brought her back to me,” she says, and he will correct her later but not now. “You came back for me.”

 He cannot think what to say; he bends his head down to rest on hers, and sees her pale feet going paler in the frost and mud. She is shivering terribly.

 “Let’s get you inside,” is all he says, and leans to pick her up.She is heavier now than he remembers but still nothing to him—he cannot imagine a sweeter burden. She laughs, she wraps her arms around his neck, and tells him where to go.

 Arya follows beside them, teasing them both, smiling happily and fearlessly for the first time since she had gotten home.

 

*******

 

He was placed in one of the old family rooms—Sansa’s old room, Arya remarks pointedly.

 “Yes, it did used to be my room,” she says, like her sister is commenting the fact that Ned Stark was their father.

 Winterfell was so empty now, except for the soldiers of the Vale staying on for a reason Sansa was vague about. People were slowly coming back, but it would be some time. Sansa might never see it; she might be forced to marry again for the good of the North. This time, the sneer in her voice was not unnoticed.

 Sandor was unused to this honourable treatment and protested, but Sansa would hear none of it. She had seen to the arrangements herself.

 “I’ve taken the master chambers,” she says. “Jon didn’t want them; I offered,” she adds quickly, turning to Arya.

 “I didn’t say—“ Arya started, and sighed. “Never mind. Is my room free?”

 It was.

 Sansa had food brought to their rooms, and embraced them once more before saying she would see them in the morning.

 Her old room was surely not as she had left it—perhaps it had been repurposed under Bolton rule. The bed was large and so was the fireplace; it was all fur and stone and silk. A silver platter of meat and bread—and fruit, he was surprised to see, lay on a table in front of the hearth.

 He couldn’t help but sneer at such luxury—but still ate all the fruit, and kept all the furs on the bed.

 Sleep did not come, even though he was fatigued from the day’s travel and fighting.Sansa’s rooms had been closest to her parents, as was proper for an older daughter, and he knew she was very close.

 He knew she had only been a child in this room but he imagined her now, pale and soft and beautiful, delighted to see him, red-gold hair on pale shoulders, wanting to see him, the curve of her breast, _wanting_ him—and he groaned, and cursed, and sat up.

 The lurch of no longer having a purpose, of being close to something he so desired—that would never be his unless he took it. That would never be his _if_ he took it.

 It _burned_ him.

 He imagined what Winterfell once was. He imagined who he might have been if he had served Ned Stark rather than Cersei Lannister.

  _An easy enough answer_ , he thought to himself, irritable. He’d be _dead_. Like all the rest of them. All good things pass away. The bad ones too; they’re just harder to let go of. His scars were proof.

Sansa had scars too, now, so they said. Sandor had not heard much, but he had heard more than Arya, before the tavern. He heard what her lord bastard husband had done to her, and what she had done to her lord bastard husband. Sansa Stark, little lovely bird with a taste for blood now, had lost everything she loved. And, he reckoned, everything she hoped to love.

 He and Arya, they were only faced now with losing everything they hated.

 Yet they all teetered on the same brink, alone in their fur-lined beds in Winterfell, Sandor Clegane and Arya Stark and Sansa Stark Lannister Bolton.

 Who was Sandor Clegane now, though, no Hound, perhaps nothing but a scarred and shattered man with nothing more to hate? Nothing to rage at, nothing to throw himself against? His brother was dead, and he was now the only one who remembered his pain. And even though they were no concern of his, the Stark girls were safe, for now, and most of who had hurt them were dead and rotting.

 Sansa was safe, and it was through her own doing and through no help of his.

  _Fuck_ , he wasn’t going to sleep tonight, was he?

 He got up, and dressed quickly, to go find where these Northerners kept their damned kitchen and their damned horrible liquor.

 

 

*******

 

The kitchens weren’t too hard to find, but the wine was. All he could find in the wide stone room smelling of spice and oil was a few flasks of cold mulled wine. He poured a cup of it, downed it, grimaced at the sweetness and the texture. He forgot Northerners tended to mix in nuts and fruit with it.

 Sansa had liked it, he remembered on the odd cold day in King’s Landing. He had laughed at her for it, calling her a child for her taste for sweet things. She had told him she would take sweetness where she could find it; he had taken her glass from her hands and drank the rest of what little she had.

  _Fuck it all_.

 He poured himself another. The splashing of the wine into the cup echoed in the empty room.

 “You should heat it up, remember? It’s cold tonight,” an amused voice called—fucking hells. He turned around to see Sansa, smiling at him.

 “I wasn’t able to sleep either,” she offers, walking to him. She takes the flask from his hands, brushing her small fingers over his large hand. “Here, let me warm this, for both of us.”

 “Little—“ he catches himself. “Lady Stark.” He doesn’t know what to call her. She is different now— a woman who knew her own strength, who had nothing to prove and no one she had to placate with pretty words, prettier lies. She is stunning now; she frightens him.

 “Please, just call me Sansa.” She pours the flask into the small cauldron hanging in the hearth, and begins to start the fire.

 “Sansa,” he finally says, unsure how to continue when one is caught by the lady of the house raiding her kitchen.

 “I never minded ‘little bird’ either.” She keeps her eyes on her task, and he hears the scrape of wood on stone.

 “I suppose now is as good a time as any,” he says, abruptly. “I was sent by the Brotherhood without Banners to—“

 “Let’s talk about all that tomorrow.” She bites her lip as she works with the tinder. “Ah!” she exclaims, happily, as the fire starts. “There. Should only be a few minutes.”

 “I suppose I can wait,” he says, and she laughs.

 She turns to a cupboard, removing some wrapped thing. He does not want to wait. He does not want to be here. He cannot stop watching her, and his throat feels drier than ever.

 “We can eat these in the meantime.” Sansa unwraps the package and lays the cream pastries between them on the long counter. When he does not move to take one, she shrugs and takes one herself.

 “I’m glad you’re here, you know,” she says, between bites. “I thought of you so often. What you said. What you did. What had become of you.”

 The fire had caught nicely, and the flames licked through Sansa’s thin nightdress. He could see the outline of her soft figure, the rise of her breasts as she breathed—and he felt his blood rise, and he wanted to rip that stupid pastry and all her damned politeness from her and take her then, feel her warm and writhing underneath him—

 He doesn’t look away, when she catches his eyes and catches him looking at her. There was no point in pretending he had been doing anything else.

 The Sansa he had known would have been flustered to be seen so intimately, but this new Sansa has all the poise as if she were reigning in court. A change from the half-formed thing he had known, who had sang, but no less sweet for the change. She smiles, and cast her eyes over him in turn, her smile turning into a small and speculative smirk.

 Sandor feels an unaccountable anger and he sneers. “You could hardly look at me back then. I wonder you can look at me now.”

 She doesn’t flinch at his words now, which unsettles him more than it should. She only smiles, less sweetly. “I think life has been difficult for both of us, since we last spoke.”

 “Thank you for your hospitality now,” he says, uselessly. “And the bed.” 

“Wait for the wine,” she murmurs, and she has become a very dangerous woman indeed.

 “Little bird,” he says, and it seems hard to speak like he is choking, and he reaches out to almost touch her. “I’m so—“

“You are _so loud_ ,” Arya interrupts, stumbling into the kitchen sleepily.

“ _Aren’t your damn rooms on the far side of the hall_?” Sandor asks, and Arya grins merrily at him. 

“ _Exactly_. That’s how loud you are,” she says, striding towards them and leaning back on the table just across from them.

Sansa leans to kiss her on her cheek and Arya’s triumph is rather deflated at being treated like a child.

“Sorry,” Sansa says, grinning. “I can hardly believe you’re here, is all.”

Some silence. Sansa takes the cauldron off the fire, ladles the steaming spiced wine into three cups and hands them out. “Jon should be back very soon,” Sansa tells her, like the information is a special treat, like this news should be as sweet as the creamy treats both girls eat.

At this, Arya only swirls her wine, watching the steam.

“I can’t wait till he comes back either,” Sansa says, kindly. “He’ll be so happy to see you. He’ll probably have to stop brooding for a _whole day_.”

 “Ha!” Arya exclaims, drawn in in spite of herself. “I don’t think it’s possible!” She takes a gulp of wine, grimaces at the sweetness. “But…so…Jon, is he not at the Wall any longer, then?”

 Something dark flickers across the older girl’s face. Sandor wondered what rumours concerning the bastard Stark boy were true. “I’ll let him tell you all that,” she finally says. Sansa pauses to drink, and then laughs into her cup. “Arya, remember when Robb helped Jon cover himself in flour and he pretended to be a ghost in the crypts, and you got so frightened you punched him.”

 Sandor laughs at that; Arya glares at him.

 “And I screamed and ran!” Sansa adds.

 Arya smiles now. “And mother made Robb rinse Jon off in the yard and then made both of them help in the kitchens for all the flour they had wasted!”

 After they had stopped laughing, Sansa adds, “Ghosts! I was so frightened of them. But now I think we would all of us long to see ghosts….”

 Arya drinks deep, hiding her face with her cup. She has not slept either, he can see.

 “I should let the two little ladies speak,” he says, and tries to push past them to leave. Arya cries out though, and Sansa pulls him back with a slim warm hand.

 Sandor sighs; they want him as a sort of buffer. They have excuses for keeping things unsaid, around him. He has known both pretty sisters long after the last time they had known each other.

 “Too scared to talk to each other alone, are you?” he says, nastily, looking between the two with bared teeth. “After all the both of you have been through, _this_ is what frightens you.”

 Both girls look down. Arya sneers. Sansa purses her lips.

 “Then I’ll catch you up, with what I know,” he says.“You _both_ have had _shit lives_ since your father got himself killed. The little bird,” he looks at Arya, points to Sansa, “got used as a punching bag by every knight in King’s Landing, got married off to the Imp, and since then has been passed around by every slime and bastard who wanted her pretty body and lordly name, until gods knows how she managed to end up again lady of her own home.”

 Sansa’s pretty face was dark; Arya’s twisted.

 “This little wolf,” and now he looks at Sansa and points to Arya, “has been scavenging and murdering her way through Westeros, living on nothing but mud and cold and stolen silver, dressed in a hundred different disguises and yet never managing to escape her own unlucky Stark name, until she left me for dead and fucked off to Essos to do gods-knows-what. I don’t know which of the two of you have been more unfortunate—maybe that’s the first thing you can talk about.”

 Sansa looks at Arya, and Sandor waits for the delicious censure from both girls that will allow him to leave.

 It doesn’t come.

 “I had hoped something like that had happened to you,” Sansa says, slowly. “Everyone thought you were dead, but when I let myself dream I dreamed you escaped, that you could run away from being a cursed Stark and start over and find any kind of freedom and happiness—if I had to be trapped and caged, I hoped you could escape it all.”

 “I did,” Arya said, carefully. “I did. At first I ended upservant girl in Harrenhall. A man from Braavos helped me escape.The Hound helped me after that, even though he kidnapped me to do it. After that I crossed the Narrow Sea and was taken in by that same man from Braavos. He and his daughter cared for me, until I decided to return.” Arya takes a breath. “But here you are now, a lady Stark strong as Mother, and I am no one at all.” Her voice twists at the end.

 They both see the other as having an advantage, Sandor thinks.  He sees it in their sad and bitter faces. Stupid Starks and their ridiculous penchants for martyrdom and pain. Sansa feels she must claw her way up and out; Arya feels as if she is drowning in darkness, sinking ever deeper.

He holds more hope for Sansa, as of now. Sansa is more poised, more sad, more strong, more bright and shining than ever. Even as she fights, there is always kindness in her; there is always the thought of the other and a security in her own self.

 She knows what she is made of, which is something Arya is still finding out about herself.

 Of course, so is he.

Arya, though, knows what she wants--which Sansa does not seem to.

That was also something that rarely troubled him, he thinks, looking into the fire.

 “I like that, though,” Arya says to Sandor, breaking into his thoughts. “I do.”

 “Like _what_?” Sandor growls around a mouthful of pastry. If he is going to be held captive he might as well eat.

 “ _Little bird_ ,” Arya coos, and snickers, and he wants to wring her lovely little neck.

 “I don’t think it was meant _nicely_ ,” Sansa says, but she smiles sideways at him and winks. “What story, though,” Sansa says. “The little wolf, and her Hound.”

 “No one’s Hound,” he mutters.

 “We are all of us changed,” Sansa agrees.

 They have all finished their wine. Sansa moves to take their cups from them.

 “I hope you will stay," she says. “You could join my brother Jon when he returns—he is desperate for good men.”

 Arya makes an outraged sound. “He’s not _Jon’s_ , he’s ours,” she snaps, in a way that brooks no argument.

 “He’s not anybody’s, Arya,” Sansa says, in a way that could make anybody hers.

 Arya groans and rolls her eyes, and Sandor remembers how being with one’s sibling takes you back enacting all those dynamics over and over, like you were fated to it.

 No, he wasn’t anybody’s. Not now.

 “I’m not looking for a master,” he says.

 “What about looking for a Mistress?” Arya leers.

 “This little lady’s looking to get _smacked in the face_ ,” he rasps, before realising that he’s threatened not Arya but a lady of the house.

 But both girls laugh. Somehow Sandor has broken down the wall between them, and they begin talking and reminiscing in earnest.

 They sit the three of them, and Sansa makes and pours more wine, and the girls laugh and laugh. He sits with them to listen to their stories and listen to them, and to tell his own, all about their time together and apart.

 Of all the things he had ever anticipated in his life Sandor never thought he would find himself here, never thought he’d so adore two little wolves in their half-ruined cold little kitchen with their terrible sweet wine warm as spiced blood down his throat.

 Sandor knew that outside, and tomorrow, everything would be so much worse, and he was worse, and the girls (the women) were worse, and this warmth and peace could not last, and winter had come and was coming and would never stop bearing down on them all, and they would never find peace.

 And yet that night was a little oasis of warmth, in spite of it all.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This all seems very nice now but it will not hold because these are all some very damaged people even if they are trying their hardest. And there is a lot of shit going on that Sansa is not bringing up at the moment while she lets everyone settle in—if she decides to bring it up directly at all. She is smart and kind, but a very secretive girl. She’s learned this the hard way, but still.
> 
> Their dynamic as a trio and as duos is hard to strike just right, because all three characters have undergone some serious changes but we have not seen to much of what that implies as a whole. But in short—Sansa is more confident in her strength and cleverness but is unsure how she wants to apply her new power, and what she wants; Sandor isn’t as suffused with rage all the time but kept all his beloved self-hatred and cynicism, and Arya is being pulled down into a very dark and black place if she lets her lust for blood and revenge continue.
> 
> Also OH MY GOODNESS this got so long I am so sorry. I have two more chapters in the queue to be looked over and more coming. ] As long as you all are enjoying this, anyway!


	3. sansa's truths

The next day dawns clear and cold. Sandor is momentarily disoriented when he wakes up in a large bed, with the sky outside white against the black stone of the walls. He washes and dresses quickly; he is pleased to note his clothes have been laundered. Outside there is the clatter of keep and town, not the camps he had been part of ever since he had left the service of the King. He finds, to his surprise, that he has missed it, and he finds himself lingering by the window in spite of himself, before scowling. The sun is higher in the sky than he would have preferred.

 _Fuck me_ , he thinks, _you have some wine and—and sweet company, and a fancy bed, and you pass out like an old drunk till late in the day._

His dark hair has grown longer than he liked also over the course of his travels; he uses a comb he finds to brush it back.

Best to get this over with as quickly as possible, he knows. Give Thoros’s message to the little bird and then carry on to the Wall to join his new ‘brothers’. Wish the bloody little Stark girls the best, or not, but rid himself of their strange hold on him forever.

 He could still fight, and he could still kill. Those skills would be useful up north. But there was nothing he could offer, here.

 Sandor did not well remember Winterfell, and certainly not the lord family’s wing. It is not large, but it is a fortress and not a palace, and there are not the wide windows of King’s Landing to help him orient himself.That, and so much of it was still ruined. If he wasn’t tripping over stones as he turned into ruined halls, then a seemingly _endless_ barrage of seemingly identical brisk little servant girls were colliding with him, making him feel huge and lumbering in the narrow stone halls.

 (He preferred the stones; they hurt, but they didn’t giggle.)

 Sansa is nowhere to be found inside so he wanders the grounds. The snow on the ground is packed down where it isn’t sullied into black slush and grey mud with the business of people and footsteps of men and horses alike. The Stark wolf banners flutter, and men are already busy at work rebuilding—and in some cases, he noted, curiously, tearing down.

 He finds Arya, sitting sullen in the courtyard, perched on steps leading from the great hall. She is in a dress, dark grey, the first time he has ever seen her wear one. Of course, its hem is already ruined and muddy though it isn’t even midday. Her black hair is loose. She is eating her breakfast, looking out at the grey and the mud and the light snow. There are crumbs in her lap; she brushes them off with a scrunched face of distaste, which deepens as she notices him.

 “I’m out here because inside feels too strange,” she says, looking up at him with a challenge in her eyes. She tears off some bread with her small white teeth. He is always surprised they are not sharp.

 “Didn’t ask,” Sandor says, and she rolls her eyes. “D’you know where your sister is?”

 “Check her _room_ ,” she says with a full mouth, waggling her eyebrows.

 He shoves her with his foot, to her loud protest.

 “You can’t kick me now, I’m a lady.”

 Sandor shoves her again, a little harder. “Come on, then. Where’s your lady sister.”

 “Gods! I don’t know, Hound. I’m her sister, not her shadow.”

 “Can’t imagine why she wouldn’t want to mope in the mud out here with you.”

 “ _You’re_ out here.”

 “Aye, but not because of I’m scared of my daddy’s ghost in the great hall.”

 Her face twists; Sandor has struck a nerve. He can’t resist it with Arya; the urge to slip small blades into her heart.

 He laughs, humourlessly, and turns to leave.

 “Check in the godswood,” Arya calls. “The heart tree.”

 For Arya, though, even a blunt instrument serves to get the job done. “ _Dumb dog_ ,” she adds, a petulant afterthought.

 Sandor walks a few steps before turning to acknowledge her with a bitter grin. She is gone, though, her plate abandoned. One of the omnipresent servant girls, this one with obscenely full lips, picks it up—something is strange to about her dress, he notes, which is also dark, also muddy—but then she catches Sandor looking and winks, and he turns right around again, cursing.

 Sandor had never spent much time in godswoods; his duties had rarely taken him there, and he felt the same towards gods as he did towards kings. He could not deny though that Winterfell’s godswood was very beautiful, in a wild northern sort of way. The woods are grey and green and white and brown, with a stream winding through it. Not all the trees had died yet.

 The crimson of the weirwood distracts him and he is very close before he sees Sansa. He stops and looks at her, her hair red and gold in the diffuse sunlight. She is looking down; looking at a letter. Her face is blank. She sits under the red bloom of the white weirwood, sheltering the little bird like a cage of white and raw bone.

 “My lady,” he says, gruffly, after waiting for her to notice his presence unsuccessfully. Gone are the days he would accost her in the halls, late at night, trying to scare her into strength or for his own bitter pleasure, the gasping vulnerable little lovely thing. They are both much changed.

 She turns, and a smile breaks across her sad and solemn face. Her eyes—it was strange that such a deep blue could shine like sunlight. “My lord,” she says.

 “Sandor,” he says. “Not a lord.”

 She laughs. “ _Sansa._ We’ve met.” She waves him to approach. “Please. You are a welcome distraction from—from household business.”

 He very much doubts this was household business. But he has a letter too; he holds it out brusquely.

 “As I said yesterday. The Brotherhood wishes to aid in your brother’s fight against what is to come. And wished to return your sister to you. Although,” he adds, “she didn’t need the help.”

 “Thank you, Sandor. I’m sure she appreciated it more than you know. As do I.” She took the letter, but only glanced at it before tucking it away.

 “Told you. I had nothing to do with it.”

 “You protected her, didn’t you?” Sansa says. “Like you protected me.” Sansa is always very quick, very empathetic. That has not changed. She is so elegant and gracious with her subtle pretty words; she could dance with others down delicate paths, making sure no one was hurt or embarrassed.

 Or, she could lead you to your death. Compassion when turned to craft was worse than poison—not only because it still tasted so sweet.

 He laughs, a short ugly sound. “Didn’t protect either of you.” What worked on Joffrey wouldn’t work on him, he told himself.

 “You said you would, though.”

 “Said I’d do plenty, sure.” He is uncomfortable, and shifts his weight off his bad leg.

 Sansa looks through the trees, out to the greenhouse where flowers grow and the morning sun shines off the glass. “It’s—I love having Arya back, of course, I do. But she is distant, and so am I. I am also glad you are here to tell me what happened to her. I can’t imagine what Arya has gone through—but you know, in my own petty way I am jealous of her. I am trying to overcome that.”

 He laughed, genuinely this time. “That feral little—“ he stops himself short. “You both have suffered plenty,” he finishes.

 She waves her hand. “Yes, as have we all, I know. I don’t envy her her pain. But Arya, she seems to have had helpers every step of the way. Yoren. You. That man from Braavos, whoever that was, if he exists. And as for me—“ she took a deep breath, a little too fast, not quite a gasp. “Worse than alone. I had, I had Joffrey and Littlefinger and Ramsey Bolton.” She does not flush or flinch when she says that last name; only a dark tenseness lurches a little in her voice.

 They listen to the cold wind. Sandor wishes briefly, desperately, that he could kill everyone who had hurt her. But they are almost all of them dead anyway. One even by her hand. He hadn’t been needed.

 She steadies her breathing, and looks up at him.“I would often think of that time you…when you—“

 He does not want her to finish the sentence. He does not want her to remember anything. “Sansa—“

 “Saved the Knight of Flowers,” she finishes.“In another lifetime.”

 “No,” he says, and his voice is the same cold rasp as ever, metal on stone. “The same shit one.”

 She laughs, and holds up the papers she is reading. “And here’s proof of that. This letter is from Petyr Baelish; although I would thank you to keep that confidential. He sends urgent news; tells me it is not just rumour. There are dragons now in Dorne; Danaerys Targaryen has returned to Westeros.”

 Sandor’s time as Hound has affected him; he is used to hearing dire news and not reacting. He must remember now to frown. “She’ll be moving on King’s Landing, I suppose.”

 “That’s reasonable to assume, yes. But this means that things will be happening very fast, now, and we in the north must prepare. And—and it goes without saying you must keep this to yourself—this means I must seriously consider this letter—which is also Littlefinger’s marriage proposal, extended to me a final time.”

 Sansa smiles at his coarse and muttered outrage. “You don’t approve,” she says, drily.

 “I don’t approve— _ha_. Why would you even consider it? You’re safe here, aren’t you? Grand lady of the house, your royal brother off signing up vassals.”

 “I’ve had a king for a brother before. It did neither of us much good.”

 “Aye, but this one maybe will do more to keep from dying, now he already has had a taste of it.”

 “Perhaps. And perhaps I might be safe. But Jon—and now Arya are not safe, not when they stand between Petyr—“

 “ _Petyr_ ,” he spat. Littlefinger. Little _cunt_.

 “—Between Lord Baelish, then, and his wish to claim to the North. True, Arya could be married off so she would no longer be a Stark in name—“

 “She’d run away first, and get herself killed.” 

  _Stupid little wolf_ , he thinks, even more rabid than when she had left him.

 But the thought needled the back of his mind. There was something wrong with Arya now, something worse than what was wrong with him and, he guessed, worse than he knew. He did not know yet what it could be or what had happened to her—but he could see already it would destroy her.

 “Exactly,” Sansa says. “She fancies herself the more practical one, I know—and yet. However, even if I don’t consider her preferences…I still must secure my family’s safety, and marrying Littlefinger might be the only way. This will also guarantee for us all the knights of the Vale, and will buy me time to save Jon until he can unite the North under him.”

 “ _That’s_ why the Vale bastards are here,” he says, thoughtful. _Not for the bastard king, but for his clever sister._ “He’ll still want your grand brother and your lovely little sister dead.”

 Her smile was brittle. “Yes. Littlefinger wants to secure my goodwill as much as possible—while at the same time keeping an eye on what is happening in Winterfell. For now, he will not move against us. He is anticipating a…a happy resolution to his proposal.”

 “What did you tell him?” Sandor snarls.

 “I didn’t _tell_ him anything.” And she cocks her eyebrow until he seems to understand, and then twists her mouth sadly, and will not meet his eyes.

 “I worry,” Sansa murmurs, “that I am not who you remember.”

 She is tense and trembling. He wants to reach out to her but cannot. “It would be hell if you were,” he says, gruff. “You were only a girl then. Now you can take care of yourself.”

 When she smiles again it is grim and cold, and he sees a flash of something sharp he has not seen on her face before. “It’s _tempting_ , isn’t it, the power to get whatever you want,” and she flicks her eyes up at him.

 Arya may know how to fight and how to kill. But Sansa, if she wanted, could make a person kill themselves and thank her for the opportunity, and that made her all the more terrible.

 “What _do_ you want, then?” he asks. He finds he is genuinely curious. “Do you want Winterfell? The Vale? The North? The _iron throne_?”

 The derision is his voice pierces her. “It doesn’t matter what I want, does it,” she says irritably. “It never has.”

 She makes to stand; he reaches out. Sansa takes his rough hand gratefully. He pulls her up; her hand is so small in his. She squeezes his hand before she lets him go and looks up at him like he is some gallant from her songs.

 Sandor opens his mouth, but anything cutting or miserable he might like to say does not come out. _Which is for the best, really_ , he knows.

 “Whatever you want,” he finally settles on saying, “it’s yours for the taking. Remember that, little bird.”

 (And this, for him, is gentleness.)

 “Do you really believe that,” she says, as if she thinks he is teasing her. “You know, you can’t speak lies in front of a weirwood, or the gods know and will punish you.”

  _You could have anything I could give you_ , he thinks. He wants to lay down at her feet, lay down everything he had. She would never hurt him, he was sure of it, he thinks, and then he wants to burn the hope out of himself.

 It is possible that she sees his thoughts. She looks up at him through her lashes and pleads (demands?): “Then I want you to stay with me, Sandor Clegane. Don’t go to the Wall. Stay and protect me and help me to protect Jon and Arya. They are all that are left to me. Even you, all that is left to me in my ruined home. This lull, this victory, this peace—it will not last.”

 “That it won’t. It never does.”

 “And so it falls to me to do what I can to keep Jon—and now, Arya—safe and free as possible.”

 “Your brother has an army. So do you, for now.”

 She takes a breath. “Jon—Jon doesn’t understand—he is like Arya. He thinks there is a way where all of us can be _happy_.” She almost spits the last words. Her blue eyes burn as she meets his gaze. “But you and I—we know better, Sandor.”

 “Why…ah, _dammit_ ,” he says. What to choose? _Why are you telling me this. Why do you want me here. Why can’t I refuse you._

 Sansa understands. _Of course she does, blasted bird._ “You once told me you would never lie to me; I do you the same courtesy. You were always very…um…straightforward with me.”

 He feels a sting, a twisting, in his throat. “Not always,” he says.

 She tilts her head as she takes in his pain, just for a moment.

 “May I…?” Sansa murmurs, but he is too slow to react and before he can push back or protest she is reaching out to touch his face, drift her hand down to his chest to support herself as she leans into him, sheltering herself from the cold wind and cold light in his broad frame, resting her head on his chest. The red leaves rustle and blow around them.

 He does not know what to do; he rests a cautious hand on her shoulder, feeling the tense strength of her under the soft fabric, careful not to brush against her softer skin. He misses his armour as she nuzzles against him slightly; it is too much to bear, with her so close to his skin and nothing to protect him from the feel of her.

 Her voice is soft, dreamy. “You know…I used to think you had kissed me, that night at the Battle of the Blackwater—“

 “ _What_?” he says, sharp, appalled—surely he had misheard her.

 She keeps her head against him. “When you were there with me, over me, I thought you might kiss me,” she says, as if he only needed further context. “For a long time, I thought you _did_ kiss me.I didn’t know if you had taken something from me or I from you, but it was nothing like I’ve ever had with anyone since—they were just _taking_ , taking from me, there was _no_ doubt about that.”

 She wraps her arms around his narrow waist, presses herself against him, her breasts and her round hips, and when she speaks again her voice is low and soft, a thrum that reaches through his chest and stomach and down to his groin. “I used to _remember_ it, clear as day, being held down by you, your—your rough, hungry mouth—and every time anyone ever kissed me after that, I would think of you—

 He grabs her sharp by the arm, jerks her back. “ _Stop_ that. What are you doing?” His face is contorted in anger.

 Sandor knows he is hurting her and he knows he is frightening but she doesn’t pull away; her face is blank.

 “What the seven hells do think you’re playing at, fool girl?” he hisses. His teeth are bared. He is almost grinning in rage.

 “I'm not playing anything.”

 He lets her go; she rubs her arm and purses her lips. She is breathing more heavily.

 He takes a breath himself, and calms. “You _needn’t do this_ , Lady Sansa. I will do what you ask, you know that,” he adds bitterly.

 Something flashes in her eyes; something like fire. ‘You misunderstand me. I am not offering…my actions are not some bid to make you stay.’

 He tilts his head and sneers. “Give me _some_ credit, now,” he says.

 “I am. Will you stay with me? Protect me? Please. Don’t go. You left me last time; please stay now.” There are unshed tears in her eyes. They are not from fear, like they might once have been.

 He doesn’t know what to tell her. That only an act of some damned god kept him from hurting her that night, or others. That he still dreams sometimes of having her now, willing or no, although he would settle at this moment for just being close. For what was he but a sad ruined beast, and what hope was there for him in any future but loneliness and humiliation and pain.

 Sandor reaches out and rests his hands on her shoulders; he leans his head down. Sansa sighs and touches her forehead to his, rests a hand trustingly on his chest.

 He does not answer; he does not need to.

 She whispers, and he hears a heavy tear hit the dead leaves they stand on. “Sandor—I’ve thought of another game. Let’s close our eyes and pretend for a moment we are back in King’s Landing, and everything will be fine. That you will protect me; that you would never hurt me. That you would bring me back to my lady mother unharmed and come back with me here to Winterfell.”

 Sandor had often mocked Sansa’s dreams and he had mocked her for giving them up—but what about his own? Surely if he had not kept hold of his dreams of knights and honour and love somewhere, there would have been nothing to hurt him with now. Nothing to burn.

 But they would both of them hurt one another, and would die in spite of it in the end. This they both knew. Dragons were in Dorne and the fire would come for them all.

 He rests his chin on her head and pulls her closer.

 “Just for one moment,” she says again, “though you and I know better.”

 “Aye, little bird,” is all he says.

 Her words make him bleed.

 When her breathing slows again, he reaches down and closes his hand around hers still holding the letter—her hand is very cold—and the crinkle of the paper shakes her out of her reverie.

 Sansa pulls back and smiles, as if they had shared nothing but a friendly conversation. She begins to leave, before turning back.

 “Oh,” she says, her voice bright and untroubled as the sky, “I suppose we’ll need to make proper arrangements. You could go to the blacksmith, see about getting some proper weapons and some armour. I’ll see about some clothes for you,” she says, looking him over with a gleeful half-grin, as though nothing was wrong and nothing was coming for them.

 Sandor only nods dumbly and turns away, turns the ruined side of his face to her.

 When he looks back she is out of sight.

 Which makes this twice today a barely grown woman has eluded him while his thoughts were elsewhere.

  _Gods-damned slippery Stark bitches_ , he thinks unhappily—although his callousness cheers him a little—and he walks back slowly the way he came, to try and find the blacksmith.

  _Dragons in Dorne?_ he thinks as he walks. _And Petyr-fucking-Baelish._

 They would all of them burn, and he wouldn’t be able to do a damn thing about it no matter how many swords he swung.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know, I originally started this story as a quick and fun exercise to keep myself writing while I wrestle with 8 million real life and here it is turning into a large and long and plotty thing. I hope to average about a chapter a week; the next two or three will come faster I hope as they are already mostly written.
> 
> Coming soon: Jon returns. And Jaqen H'ghar haunts Arya--possibly in the flesh; she is uncertain. And of course there will be poor crafty Littlefinger, very soon. 
> 
> Your feedback sustains me--Sandor (and tbh Sansa) is a far cry from characters I usually write, so it has been a fun challenge. Thank you so much for reading this <3 <3 <3


	4. futures bright like blood on snow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sandor gets used to Winterfell; the Stark girls struggle in their own ways.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains references to Sansa's experiences with Ramsay Bolton and how she is dealing with it; there is definitely nothing approaching the level of the show, but just a heads up.

Sansa asks him to write back to Thoros immediately. He scowls at the blank paper for some time before finally scratching a quick message—“The Stark girl” (he has to cross out the beginnings of ‘bitch’, which Thoros will see and laugh at, he thinks,) “and I are staying here for the known future.”

After a moment, he adds, “At the request of Lady Sansa Stark”, and then signs it “CLEGANE” and quickly rolls the paper so he doesn’t have to dwell on the message. Some of the ink bleeds dark through the paper; Thoros’s problem, he thinks. Sandor hands it off to the first servant he sees to be sent to the Wall for when Thoros arrives.

For weeks straight, it sleets out of a low and freezing white sky and all over the scorched black stones of Winterfell there is a tense and sullen hush.

Sandor is no stranger to war or horrors, but usually they happened in some quick fell strike, like lightning. But now he feels an eerie calm, a pulling out and away like an evil tide in this winter’s world.

Something is coming and when it does it will sweep them all away. He is not the only one who feels this way; he sees it in the drawn faces of the dwellers of Winterfell, he hears it in their muted voices and in the hush at night even in the winter’s town, he feels it even in the way the sleet never resolves into a full storm.

He does not have much time to let his thoughts wander. Sansa has been frustratingly vague as to what she expects of him, preferring to meet with him each morning in her solar to discuss the day. In these meetings she is always pleasant, and he enjoys her company. But the godswood hangs between them, as does King’s Landing, and he thinks the both of them feel tentative at the new power dynamics they find themselves negotiating between them.  Sandor would have for himself some regular work to lose himself in. When, one grey morning, he asks her for as much, Sansa tells him that such assignments would be best decided when Jon and/or her shield gets back.

Sandor’s mouth pulls down at the mention of her shield. “Your shield a territorial sort, is he?” He is irritated at his disappointment.

Sansa purses her lips to keep from smiling; some secret mirth danced in her eyes. She is sitting at her desk. “Somewhat, yes,” she says, dipping her quill in ink. “But don’t think of it now.”

He does anyway.

Often.

He also fits in easier than he thought here—many men in the North were coloured like him with black hair, sharp features, light eyes, and large enough where he didn’t stick out badly. Sandor didn’t attract too much attention unless people recognised him, or unless they got close enough to see his face. 

Even without regular assignments, he falls easily into the rhythms of Winterfell. Sansa proves excellent at running the housefly and serving as Lady while her half-brother is away. She works with efficiency, authority, and even warmth, if she doesn’t forget herself. Sometimes as he watches her give commands and kind words, he forgets that she was once a frightened little girl who only loved the romantic worlds she found in songs.

( _Although_ , he grants, j _ust because she could operate in this foul and frozen world didn’t mean she took any joy in it._ The little bird has long since learned to sing songs not her own.)

She commissions armour and weapons for him per his requests, as well as some perfunctory clothing. He only sees a hint of the dreamy child he knew when she also gives to him a suit of clothes she designed and sewed herself. When she gives them to him at one of their morning meetings, it is with a shy pride.

“For your new life,” she says, whatever that meant, as she hands him the bundle.

Sansa, he thinks, had always accepted her circumstances, but always tried to find a way forward, as if there was ever some possibility of a bright future t move towards. Once he had found this tendency foolish; now, he found it unsettling.

The fabric in his hands is heavy and fine, and completely unsuitable to wear as a fighting man. He looks down at his gift, which he holds lightly in a creeping horror—he has no previous experience to draw upon for a response.

“I guessed at your measurements,” she says. The solar is decorated more delicately than the rest of the keep, and the black scorched roof sets off the pretty picture that Sansa makes, sitting and smiling. “So make sure to let me know if they don’t fit, and I can fix it.”

“I’ll do that,” is all he says—or mutters, and she smiles. “Anything else?”

“Yes,” she says, and the simple joy went out of her face. She reaches under her chair to grab at something, and he looks away from the white curve of her breast as she leans.

“I also made these for Arya—“ she says, holding up a tunic and breeches. “But I haven’t been able to find her all day.”  She looks up at him. “I don’t suppose you have seen her? She’s—well. You’re the only one who can seem to find her.”

“Maybe the only one she lets find her,” Sandor says, darkly thinking of all the little wolf bitch’s newfound skills.

It is the wrong thing to say. Sansa’s face twists before she forces a laugh. “No doubt. Well, since that is the case, perhaps you can find her and give these to her?”

Sandor takes it. “She’ll appreciate it isn’t a dress,” he says, trying to make up for his mistake.

“Don’t worry,” Sansa says, gesturing to her current embroidery on her lap. “I’m making her one of those too.”

Arya had not been faring as well as he has. She had proved a squirrelly, absent, angry little thing and he is surprised to find he feels a little sorry for her. Although, he thinks, after a search of several hours, as he finds her perched in the mews admiring the falcons, only a very small amount.

“Your sister made these for you,” he says as way of greeting, shoving the clothes towards her.

She takes them. “Why are _you_ giving it to me then?”

“She couldn’t find you.” The birds shift and complain at his low rough voice. They are small and fierce little things.

“Yeah, I don’t hang around her like you do.”

“No, you hide like a little mouse.”

She slides off the table she sits on to stand and bares her teeth. “Sansa always wants to talk about the future, what’s to come, about what we need to do. I can’t think about that now.”

Arya had once told him how she thought of her life as a lady when he had mocked her for missing all her fine things—that’s not me, she had said. It had struck him, this decision to say no to what was written for you.

He had never thought to say no—except once. Except at the Blackwater.

“What a fine thing to be able to choose,” he says now.

Arya ignores him. She furrows her brow, examining the clothing. “I can fight in these,” she says, in wonder.

“It’s almost like your sister cares about you and knows you don’t like pretty dresses,” Sandor says.

“I don’t not like pretty dresses,” Arya says, hotly. “I just also like fighting.”

“Maybe someday you might like playing at being a normal girl happy to see her family and show up to spend time with them, every so often, ” he says as he leaves, laughing as he heard her try to sputter something back, which disturbs the falcons and earns them both a censure from the falcon-master.

He doesn’t touch his new clothes again until Sansa asks after them; she is worried he doesn’t like them. That evening, after no small amount of cursing or debate, he decides to wear his specially-made clothes to dinner. They fit, almost disturbingly well, to his unhappiness. Now he has no excuse.

When he enters the hall Sansa is there, and waves him over with a smile. Arya, he is surprised to see, sits next to her, also in her new clothing for the first time he’s seen. Sansa seems in a much better mood at her sister’s presence. The hall is more full also, almost a hundred there by his reckoning.

“Don’t you look nice,” Arya leers at him, sarcastically, earning her a black look from Sandor.

Sansa grins and looks him over, almost languorously. “I was just thinking the same thing, Arya,” she says sweetly, and gets a even blacker look from them both, and she laughs.

***

Later, in his room—her old room, she wouldn’t hear of him changing despite his new station—he examines an old half-burnt chest he finds in the corner to see if it could store his new clothes. Inside, he finds something crumpled and white and stained. Sandor pulls it out with a scowl. It is heavier than it looks, and more voluminous

He lays it out to see what it is. He should have known.

It is a wedding dress.

It is ripped and cut almost to shreds, and stained in splotches a brown-red he knows all too well. Not just maiden’s blood either, and too much for one time—she must have had to wear it over and over. There are other stains, too.

Sandor finds he must remember to breathe; he feels a rage he has not experienced it some time and his grasp is so tight he accidentally rips it again.

He didn’t know if Sansa had hidden it there or some servant, unwilling to throw away something so obviously fine, but not willing to bring it up to her. He was unsure what he should do, other than burn it, other than track down anyone who had ever spoken to Ramsay fucking Bolton.

But Sansa had already taken care of it herself.

“What are you doing?” comes from his open door, high-pitched, confrontational. It is Arya, crossing her arms, raising her eyebrows. “What’s _that_?”

Sandor curses in surprise, looks at her, then sighs. Maybe she could help, for once. “Come here and look at this.”

“What?” She frowns, suspicious.

“Arya,” he says, and he never says her name so the young woman straightens with worry. “Come here, girl.”

She steps into his room and kneels next to him. He hands her the dress. When she realises what it is, she drops it in disgust, cursing. Her eyes are wet when she looks up at him.

“What the _fuck_ , Hound,” she hisses, standing.

He picks it up gently—it was still Sansa’s—and stands too.

“I found it in the chest here. Do you think—do you think Sansa put it here? I’d want to burn it, but who knows what ladies feel about burning good scraps of silk.”

Arya looks at him, cocks his head at the uncertainty, the pain, in his voice. “If you like, I could ask her,” she says, and her voice is the gentlest, the smallest, he has ever heard from her.

Sandor sneers. “No.”

Arya’s eyes still shine; she looks at the dress. “All she used to dream of was growing up and getting married to a handsome lord. Some kind of future out of a song.”

“Got her wish,” Sandor grunts. His knuckles go white, from grasping the dress.

Arya notices. She takes it from him. She covers his hands with hers in a momentary gesture of friendship, and Sandor once again, always around Arya, remembers that he once had a sister, with dark hair and light eyes like he did. Like she did.

“We’ll just stuff it back in,” Arya says quickly. “I’ll mention it to Sansa—I’ll just say we found some old dress of hers or something, that was ruined, hopefully she’ll figure it out without my being too specific—and then ask her what she wants us to do with it.”

He imagined Sansa’s face at the confrontation. He imagines Arya’s trying to be gentle. “Couldn’t you strip it for usable silk, and just tell her after you were finished?”

“I think it should be up to her, Sandor,” she says. “This is hers.” She is not speaking of the dress.

They both freeze as they hear Sansa laugh from outside the room. “You two seem to be getting along uncharacteristically well,” she says, leaning in the doorway, smiling. She is the most at ease that he has seen her some time.

 _Have to learn to close my goddamn door_ , he thinks, _Stark girls always making their way in like flies_.

Neither Arya nor Sandor are good enough or quick enough to hide their feelings; Sansa sees the shock and embarrassment on their faces. “Oh,” she steps back, a little confused. “Forgive me I did not mean to intrude—“ but then she sees what Arya and Sandor are holding. “Oh,” she says again, and she bends like she has been punched in the gut, and puts her arm out to brace herself.

“Sandor found it in the chest,” Arya explains, as the man walks forward to try and aid her.

Sansa steps past him slowly, dreamily. She reaches out, hovers her hand above the fabric Arya is holding and looking down at in distaste.

“It used to look--well, lovelier, all the red on all the white,” Sansa says, and her voice is strange. “Now it’s all gone so brown and dark and ugly.” She was almost vibrating. “I am—sorry, the both of you had to see this. Mortified, perhaps. I’m afraid my attendant did not take me seriously when I told her to get rid of it.” She is talking faster and faster; she sounds frantic, she tries to pull it away from her sister. “Give it to me, I’ll take care of it, I’ll—“

Arya lets go but Sandor jerks it back from Sansa, reaches his arm out to steady her shoulder. Her trembling slows but does not stop. Her face was white and she would not meet his eyes.  “No, little bird,” he says, his voice rough like his touch. “Let me.”

He walks to his fireplace and kneels. Finding the fire striker and bracing himself, he lights and stokes the fire.

Sandor behind ripping the dress apart and feeding it to the bright fire, until he notices Sansa grits her teeth at the sound, and he nudges what and then he just nudges what remains into the blossoming flame.

His fear  of fire was not of the mind but of the body, it was immediate and visceral. Every muscle strained but he stoked it, only flinching a little as sparks landed on him. He hopes the girls do not notice but still Arya walks over and takes over, pushing into the fire, jabbing it with Needle.

Sansa sits on the bed.

They watch it burn, Arya grinning, Sandor sneering, Sansa with no expression at all.

The fire glitters on all their faces as they gaze into it.

When it has finished and been reduced to ash, Sandor helps Sansa up, but Arya is the one who walks her to her room, slinging her arm companionably around her sister’s waist, pretending it is out of affection and not necessity.

He stays up until the ashes burn out completely, and sweeps them up to throw them into the cold wind to be blown away into less than memory.

Only then can he sleep.

 

***

 

After that night, his favourite assignment is to lead raids to scrub out the last of the Bolton deserters. Not only is it delicious to him, it plays to his strengths—finding and killing.

Sandor leads small groups of new and remaining Stark men, as well as a few soldiers from the Vale, on journeys up to a few days at a time through the cold and the trees. The Vale still props up Winterfell. Although new men and resources trickled in each day, it is nowhere close to even sufficient. In spite of this, the men work well enough together and take direction from  reasonably well.

He supposes some of them are afraid of him, he thinks with satisfaction. Anyway, any reservation or slowness to obey disappeared after they found the first camp and he immediately disemboweled his first man.

The blood that falls on the snow is perfect to him; he feels he is undoing, mark by mark, all he has seen on the dress. And fresh blood is so bright; it sears brighter than the pale sun. More shining than anything that awaits any of them.

After the fifth such raid, though, after one where all they had done was butcher a lot of starving and desperate and frightened men, Sandor found he had lost the taste for it. Instead of letting the men celebrate by breaking into the ale they had found, he sharply ordered them to gather up the stolen goods and that they should leave immediately.

Sandor himself picks up a shabby sword from one of the men, and wipes the blood off best he could on his corpse.

The blood in the snow, it erases nothing of the blood on the dress. It is only more of the same. He has only carried it from the past into the present.

Sandor suddenly feels so tired, so sad. His leg aches. Maybe this is what it is to be old, he thinks. He does not have so many years on him, but they have been bloody ones.

Maybe it is something else.

 

***

 

After this, he asked Sansa permission to helps with Winterfell’s reconstruction to let the other men prove themselves in the raids.

“It’s their home,” he says, when he first suggests it, “let them defend it.”

“It’s yours too, Sandor, if you want it,” she says.

He scowls.

“I suppose I didn’t know you knew how to build, or wanted to,” she continues, “Also, I didn’t want to insult you with such menial tasks.”

He shrugs. “Noticed the resources trickling in are not of the best quality,” and at that her face darkens; she has had trouble with those proclaiming loyalty again to the Starks, after so easily turning to the Boltons. “Nor are they being deployed particularly well. Since I have some recent experience, thought I might see that straight.”

She puts her quill down. She is doing the household accounts, and is not pleased by what she sees, but blinks to erase the gloom.

“Recent experience?” she says, smiling.

He shrugs again, does not elaborate.

“Very well,” she agrees, and returns to her work. “I would be most happy to have a man of… _recent experience_ , to help. Thank you, Sandor.”

He feels her eyes on his back as he departs.

She occasionally comes to watch him as he builds, with the same proud speculation he so often sees on her face now.

The reconstruction does not consist of straightforward repairs. Today Sansa argues with the construction foreman in the courtyard, dropping rank and icy words.

Sandor steps in after a moment. “Is there something wrong,” he asks, looming over the foreman.

“These changes have not been approved by her brother,” the small man says. He is standing on stone stacked in the frozen mud.

Sandor bares his teeth in a wolfish smile down at the man, holds it a second. Today he may prefer building to killing, but he still finds joy in frightening. 

“Maybe in the North, it’s different,” Sandor says. “But everywhere else, when the lady of the house tells you to do something, you do it, and don’t complain,” he growls. For a rare day it is not raining, but the wind still whips his hair away from his face, exposing his ugly scars.

The man glares at him, flushed, aware that they can see his fear and disgust.

“Of course,” he says to Sansa. “Forgive me, Lady Bolton.”

Sandor steps forward but Sansa touches his elbow gently and he stops. The gesture is not unnoticed by the man. “Thank you, Stig,” she says, and the man departs with a curt nod.

“Some do not honour that marriage, of course,” she mutters to him. “Though they all here loudly heard it legitimised with my cries of pain, when they were too great to suppress. Some are kind enough to call me Lady Lannister.” Her blue eyes are cold. Her face is hard.

“I could teach him to call you whatever you like,” Sandor offers with another predatory smile.

She laughs, and shakes off her anger. “Oh, if only, Sandor, if only.”

He nods to the ongoing construction. “Why are you changing Winterfell’s face, instead of restoring it?”

Sansa smiles at the changing face, and it is a dark smile that reminds him, of all things, fucking Baelish. “This is no longer my parents’ home. This is no longer the Bolton’s den. Yet it holds the same shape and keeps all memory fresh as newly spilled blood, though the players are all gone. I would have something for myself, to stand as long as I may.”

A frivolous project then, and one Jon would almost certainly not authorise. Sandor shifts. He did not blame her. He did worry for her. Her fierceness was admirable, but something had been burned away in the little bird. He hoped it was not something vital.

“I mean it,” he offers, in an attempt to cheer her. Someone had already terrorised the truth of the world into her, it would do no good to drive any point home about her very precarious standing here. “You want them all to call you Queen of all of Fucking Westeros, Lady of all Lemon Cakes, I’ll beat it into them and gladly.”

The other men could see him; he could no doubt be overheard, but he didn’t care. What could they do to him? What could they do to Sansa?

She laughed, and he felt a swirl of triumph. “Thank you Sandor,” she said, back to her normal self, and then she leans in and lowers her voice. “As long as you will still call me ‘little bird,’ I think I shall be satisfied. Although,” she admits, looking up at him with that same mockingbird grin, “‘Queen’ has a very nice sound to it, doesn’t it?”

He nods, unsure of what she is telling him. No—not unsure. Not wanting to believe.

After this conversation, he cannot lose himself in his work as he did before.

Sansa in a shining crown. It was a thought of the future that had blinded uncountable men and women before her. So dazzling, it could burn her right up, if she wasn’t careful.

Fool, fool little bird. She had killed Ramsey herself but there was so much else looming ahead of her, hungry, blood on the tooth, as they said in the north.

He wants to focus her on Winterfell. On her brother and her sister.

If he can make her feel safe, perhaps he can do them both some good.

 

***

 

Sansa soon claims that he cannot be spared outside Winterfell or on menial tasks. While her shield is gone, he must stand in and attend her as she sees to the business of the North.

She sits at the high table with her record books and sees those who would speak to the Lord of the North. Sandor stands behind her in his new armour, in the greys and dark colors of the Starks. When people enter, they  almost always pause as they see her, and then him—and sometimes confusion or fear flickers across their face. If she is to meet with someone difficult or hostile, she has him stand beside her at the great table, to glower with his ugly face at those who would insult her, or try to take advantage of her.

She rather enjoys the thought of setting him on others, he feels. A kind of power.

He would be lying if he said he didn’t enjoy it too.

Most of the supplicants came with matters of reconstruction and change of leadership—fairly standard matters, in Sandor’s opinion. Some, however, had a more sinister tinge.

The Northern houses had all declared for the Starks—had declared for her brother Jon—including House Cerwyn, House Glover, and House Manderly. This provided Winterfell and the Starks with a much-needed infusion of security and resources—although, of course, not as much that could normally be expected in times of peace when wars had not ravaged the country for years and if the Boltons had not stripped all they could manage in the short time they ruled.

Just because the great houses had pled, did not mean everyone was pleased with a bastard king, nor his sister with her multiple marriages to hostile houses. Many of the lesser lords who came, many of whom would not be visited by Jon, came while he was away to try to gauge the weakness and to take advantage of his little half-sister.

One such man stand before them now, a Lord Halstenn. He is young, but still has years on Sansa or Jon. He simpers, he flatters ‘Lady Bolton’ on her beauty. Sandor idly imagines wringing his neck, like a chicken.

Sansa’s eyes glitter. “Thank you for your kind words, my lord,” she says. Her voice is sweet and sharp. “My husband is dead, however. Betrayed by his dogs—whom he believed to be _loyal_. You understand.”

All good will leaves the man’s face. “My apologies, Lady Bolton,” he says.

“You may call me Lady Stark,” she says, gracious. “Or Lady Sansa, if that is difficult to remember. And you are of course welcome in these halls. Is there another reason you have come, other than your most welcome regards?”

Of course, there is. Halstenn is terribly regretful, but he is here to tell her in person that his minor house has not the resources to send to Winterfell.

“Not with winter come,” he says. “Not with what your husband has already taken.”

“Correct me if I am wrong,” Sansa says, smiling, “but did not your house provide much to my late husband?”

He only just saves himself from scowling. Sansa’s awareness surprises him. He is blond, dark-eyed—he must have more Southern blood in him. “You are correct, Lady Sansa. We had hoped out generous provisions to the Boltons might purchase for us their goodwill. Unfortunately, this leaves us for little for a new lord so soon.”

“You will have to content yourself with the goodwill of the Starks,” Sansa says, smoothly. “And, Lord Halstenn, forgive me if I am wrong—but has my brother Jon not already granted you substantial relief of your usual levies?”

“Even so,” Halstenn says, “we are unable to make good on this. Perhaps I might wait until your brother returns, if that might be preferable?”

A weaselley little move, Sandor thinks, both lending legitimacy to his claim that he is not trying to put one over on her, and a jab at her own authority.

“You are of course welcome to do so,” Sansa says, “But he will stand my decision, which is to maintain your previous deal with him. If this is not acceptable, I may be able to send a steward to your lands, to make an appraisal, and then perhaps another arrangement can be made. House Stark of course wishes to ensure your stability and success, and would not see you wanting.”

Halstenn bows, tense-jawed. “That will not be necessary, my lady. Thank you.”

Sansa beams at him. Her gold-red hair and white skin shine in the scorch and blue of the hall and the darkly dressed men and women inside. Only the white sky and snow outside seems to provide light, reflecting off the slavering jaws of the Stark banner wolf.

Later that day, when Sandor stands close to her again, she pulls him down to her. “Keep an eye on that one,” she says, and he nods. He does not need to ask who she means.

Up close she smells of fresh snow and citrus and silk.

 

***

 

Sandor does not sleep that night.

He waits outside in the cold, clad in dark and heavy furs that blend him with Winterfell’s stones, and add to his bulk when seen against the snow. He watches.

Halstenn does not disappoint. One of his men slips out of his quarters in the night, ostensibly to take a stroll. It is curious, though, how he is dressed now more like a man from Winterfell, and how he focuses on areas that were ruined and still under repair.

Sandor grins to himself as he follows him, as he uses a rope to clamber up the sentinel tree and into the armoury. The man had no doubt stolen or bribed away a set of keys. This would be dealt with later—as well as who Halstenn might be selling his information to. Tonight, he had happier tasks.

The man is furtively taking note of the stock of weapons and armour, as well as he can in the dark. The owls coo in the loft above as he examines the stock.

Sandor grips the man by his neck and lifts him, hurling him hard to press against the opposite wall. The man kicks; he scrabbles and claws for purchase on the stones. He chokes.

“You’re a guest, so I can’t kill you,” Sandor muses. “Is that right?”

“…yes,” the man admits, accurately guessing that claiming to be from Winterfell would not go well for him. “Not from here.”

“Although one might say there are no guests in another man’s armoury.”

“Please,” he says. “It’s a mistake.”

 

Sandor squeezes his neck, lifts him higher. “Shut up, you sad fucker,” he says. “How about this. You tell your little lord to stop fucking around, and I maybe won’t take half the men of Winterfell down to his gods-forsaken lands and take them all for myself after I’ve slit all your traitorous throats.” At the last words, he shoves the man’s throat into the stones and enjoys the sputtering—until it starts to fade, and only then does he drop him.

“Now,” Sandor says, grinning down at him, his black hair hanging forward. “Why don’t we go speak to him together?”

 

***

 

The next morning at breakfast, Sansa waves him over.

“I’m afraid Lord Halstenn has left in the night,” she smiles. “Drawn away by an unexpected emergency at home. But he has left his promise to not only pay what he promised Jon, but the full amount. Isn’t that wonderful of him, to so support House Stark.”

“Aye, little bird, it is. I—“ he pauses. “I hope you’ll also be speaking with his friends,” he tries.

Sansa held his gaze a little too long, a little too impishly, for her to be in the dark.  “Of course I will be, as soon as I can determine who they are. But you look tired, Sandor. Why don’t you rest a little before you start your day?”

He nods. “That would be welcome, my lady.”

“You know,” she says, looking him over with ownership, with pleasure.  “It is so _very nice_ to know I can rely on you.”

She rather enjoyed setting him on others, he feels. It would be a lie to say he took no pleasure in it as well.

He smiles back at her, showing his teeth.

Arya rolls her eyes and groans theatrically and puts her head on the table. She is wearing a new dress, that looks like Sansa’s craftsmanship.

“Be of good cheer, Arya,” he hears Sansa saying as he leaves the hall, grabbing some bread and meat. “I received two more marriage proposals for you this morning, you lucky girl.”

“I told you, I can’t marry anyone, I’ve been ruined by my travels.”

“Well, you look fine to me. Very lovely. Anyway, one such proposal even suggested his youngest son might like a highborn lady of some…experience.”

He hears Arya’s groan from outside the hall.

 

***

 

That night he stands guard outside her door. He only does so infrequently; tonight she asks for him.

He feels pride, but also a tension, a pathetic pull—she slept behind that door, vulnerable, lost, only under sheets and nightclothes. And she had asked him, guilelessly, to protect her.

Sandor tries to think of other things.

Her door opens. Startled, he reaches for his sword—but it was only Sansa poking her head out.

“Sandor,” she breathed. “Good. I need to ask you something.”

He knits his brow. “What’s the problem, little bird? Do you need…” fuck, did she need some kind of wise woman? He had been the one to find her first bleeding, all that dark blood on white sheets and her terrified sobbing; he was not anxious to repeat the experience now.

“Come in,” she says, opening the door wider. “I have to explain it.”

Sandor looks back and forth. The halls are abandoned, but one never knew. It was not at all late yet. “Is that wise?”

“Oh for the seven’s sake, Sandor, I’m already ‘sullied by my travels’ too or whatever Arya called it. I can hardly fall much further. I care not if they think I am…enjoying my shield in salacious ways,” she whispers, and blushes.

“You should.”

“I promise not to compromise your own integrity—“

He curses and pushes past her inside, closing the door.

Her rooms were not what he expected. There was the large and sumptuous bed, what remained of the old hangings. (Her unsentimentality did not extend to her parents’ quarters, he sees.) In the centre, though, a large table with a map of Westeros set with pieces. More at home in a battle tent then in a lady’s quarters—except the pieces were beautifully embroidered little circular tokens of the banners, not the usual decorously carved things.

There was even a mockingbird at the Vale, with a needle still through it.

Sansa is still fully dressed, though her hair was in a simple braid that was coming uncharacteristically loose. She looks exhausted, although it lent a looseness to her bearing that was still becoming.

Sandor approaches the table, running his blunt fingers over the map. “Where did you get this?”

“I made it,” Sansa said, sounding irritated. He was focusing on the wrong thing, he knew, but still. “I am quite skilled, you know,” she almost snaps.

He laughs quietly. “Don’t doubt it.” He picks up the mockingbird and looks at her.

“I’m not finished,” she says.

He barks a laugh. Right. “So, this what you do when you’re not at your sewing?”

She rounds the table to stand across from him, resting her hands on the corners and leaning forward. This time, he lets himself look.

“This is what I must do, Sandor. I must plan. I must try to keep us all alive. Jon is preoccupied with the dead. And Arya is too, in her way. I’m the only one who seems interested in preserving any kind of future for myself. And my family,” she added hastily, although slightly late.

He nods in acknowledgement and grins unpleasantly. “And there are certain potentials, certain plans, you can’t talk to your brother about.”

She smiles, relaxes, her brow smoothes. “Exactly, Sandor. I need your advice.”

He snorts. “Not a strategist, little bird, just a soldier.”

“And I’m just a silly lady. Or a tragic widow. Either way, you are far more qualified. I know nothing of battles and nothing of subterfuge or preparation. I hardly knew what I am doing. All of this,” she says, gesturing at the map, “is quite beyond me.”

He sneers. “Save the flattery and false distress for the others, my lady.”

She straightens. “It’s not flattery or false distress.” She pauses. “Although I may be exaggerating a little.”

“Save the exaggerations, then.”

“Fine,” she smiles. “But I mean it, Sandor, I need your input.” There is a hint of desperation in her plea. This, he thinks, is not false. If she is a smart girl, and she is, then she should be a little desperate given her precarious position.

“I’ll tell you what I can,” he says. “But it’s been a long time since I’ve been in King’s Landing.”

“Yes it has,” she says, a little distantly, “for all of us. But no, I am not currently interested only in the Lannisters.”

She gestures to the map, pointing out each piece as she mentions them. “This is how I understand it: The North needs to consolidate power,” she says. “We are vulnerable. Dragons are in Dorne and the wights come down from the North, or so Jon says. We live now by luck and good graces, on the rallying cry of a girl of only ten years. Winterfell is in ruins.”

Sansa sighs. “It would be best, of course, if I could marry off Arya—perhaps she can be persuaded to see reason, to marry a Tyrell of Highgarden, to give us some hold in the south. Of course, it would be a miracle if they agree to the match—we are not very eligible right now, any of us Starks,” she laughs, bitterly. “Although I must admit it is a pleasant reprieve for myself.”

“What about—“ Sandor pauses. “Thought you had an offer.”

Sansa’s face twists. “I do,” she says. “I have not decided yet.”

“Good,” he says before he can stop himself.

She smiles at that but quickly composes herself. “It is Daenerys that I am not sure of.”

“No one is, little bird. We all of us hear little, and what I hear can’t be true, half of it.”

“Oh? You don’t think she gave birth to the dragons herself?” Sansa says, innocently, and he laughs.

“Don’t think her ti—“ Sandor rewords the vulgar sentiment—“Don’t think she fed them fire from her own self, either.”

“Now that would be a feat worthy of a queen,” she laughs too, but then goes solemn. “From what I have heard, and what I can guess, we have to assume she will be moving on King’s Landing and soon, yes?”

Sandor nods. “Would make the most sense. Although it’s hard to know. She sails with the Tyrells and the Greyjoys, and has the imp at her side.”

“This is what I want to know,” Sansa says. “I remember all too well the Blackwater, and how we all thought Stannis would be victorious.”

Sandor shifts uncomfortably. His leg only seems to ache when he feels regret or shame, which seems entirely unfair. The scars on his face hardly hurt at all, anymore.

The young woman continues. “If she moves on King’s Landing, with all her forces—she will win, won’t she?”

“Yes, I would say so,” Sandor says, slowly. “The Lannisters are bankrupt and the bitch Cersei is mad. She’ll have to burn the city down with herself and Danaerys in it to bring her down.”

Sansa sighs, satisfied. “Good. That is what I hoped.” She picks up the embroidered dragon piece, red and black. “I would meet with Daenerys the Dragon Queen while she is still in Dorne. We are lucky that Tyrion stands with her; he would receive me on her behalf, I am sure.”

“To propose an alliance, or to pledge your loyalty? Or something else?”

Sansa smiles at him, her mockingbird grin. “I have yet to decide. Do you think I have time, before she moves on King’s Landing?”

Sandor shrugs. “That depends on when you plan on leaving, I suppose.”

“I can’t leave before Jon gets back,” she says, with a small pout. “But I expect him back soon.”

He bites back a curse, sighs himself instead. Telling her to be careful, to not do this, is beyond what he feels he can say.

She looks at him, softly. “I know, Sandor. Thank you for your concern.”

She came around to his side of the table to look up at him. Something tugs at her mouth as she speaks. “I wish—“ she starts, but catches herself.

She takes his hand, briefly, again. “I am very glad you are here.”

He makes his hands to fists. “ _Why_?” His voice is harsher than usual, harsher than he meant it.

Sansa considers him, looking at the Stark colors on his shoulders and chest, his scars.

“I am very glad to have someone for myself,” she says, finally. She is speaking low. “As much as I can, anyway.” Her voice grows a little bitter, a little tense. “I wish—I wish I could do what I like, have what I like. Pledge myself to whom I like, like everyone else seems to be free to.”

“You could leave,” he offers. “Go to Essos, maybe, where no one knows a Stark from a Frey from a Lannister from a lame horse.”

“I can’t, though, can I? Not when I still have family binding me here.”

“Like I said, little bird,” he says, his voice hoarse. “You could have anything you wanted.”

She takes a deep breath, chews her lip maddeningly.

He is suddenly very aware of their surroundings, the closeness, the quiet, the bed.

“Thank you for all your help, Sandor,” she says. “I wonder, as it is late and I do not want to disturb anyone…” she turns, pulling her braid forward and half-turning back. “Could you unlace me? Just the dress; I can do the rest myself.”

 _What_ , he thinks furiously, _is this little idiot playing at_.

He didn’t answer; he reached his hand out for the back of her long white neck. He hears her sharp intake of breath as he touches her; he feels his blood surge low.

For a short moment Sandor lets his hand rest, running his heavy fingers over her silk skin. He could almost reach all the way around—he could wring her neck, with just one hand.

He lets his hand slide down; he raises his other hand to start undoing the laces on her back. They came loose without much struggle. The dress is a pale blue, lighter than her eyes. Brighter than the sky has been in some time.

Sandor works slowly. The only sound in the room is their breathing and the slick whisper of silk.

When he is finished he gently pulls the dress apart at the shoulders, showing her skin and her white shift beneath. She does not move; she does not tell him to stop.

He lets his hand slide from the arch of her neck, over her sharp shoulder blades and down, feeling the warmth of her skin through the sheer white fabric. He wants to reach in and around, to pull her close. Push her down.

When he reaches the small of her back, when he rests his hand there, she suddenly shudders and cries out in distress.  Sandor pulls back immediately; when she turns, her face is white, and she is shaking.

“That will be all, Sandor, thank you.” Her arms are clasping her dress protectively over her full breasts. “I—I’m sorry.”

“Sansa—for fuck’s sake, girl, I didn’t—“ He feels huge and stupid and clumsy; he feels predatory and monstrous.

“Not you,” she manages. “It wasn’t you. You did as I asked. Thank you.” She leans forward and up to give him a peck on his unscarred cheek.  “That will be all.”

He nods.

“Actually,” Sansa says. “I would prefer if you didn’t guard my door tonight. Or in the near future.”

He scowls. “You needn’t fear anything from me. I’ll _restrain_ myself.”

“It’s—it’s not you, Sandor.” She straightens and composes herself, and her shoulders relax and fall. “Or rather, it is. I’m afraid I would find your presence too distracting for me to sleep.”

 _Same thing_ , he thinks, bitter. _Couldn’t sleep for fear. Fuck it all, she had been the one who had asked him to touch her._

He nods, sneers. “I’ll find someone else,” he growls. “Someone who won’t lie awake hoping he won’t harm you.”

“Sandor—“ she called, but he closed the door on her plea. He heard a strange broken gasp as he leaves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Setting up the proverbial pieces and relationships takes more time than I thought so I apologize I was wrong again about timelines. Jon in two chapters, Jaqen in three to four. Baelish in the next five at the latest; Brienne sooner.
> 
> The next chapter is written; it just needs to be edited and I should have it up this weekend.
> 
> Re: Sansa and the repercussions of her recent experiences. I hadn’t meant to delve into that too much at all, but it proved necessary to explore her character and actions as she is in this strange post-season 6 time. IDK it’s a weird calculus, with these three primary characters, trying to figure out how they’d change according to what happened to each other, and how they would react to each other. 
> 
> My point is that it’s pitching a bit dark, but not unrealistically, I feel. It is not something I wish to dwell unduly on; writing it was very difficult. SO in the future there will be much much less of it, if any. I just felt like it had to be addressed at some point.
> 
> Otherwise! Your feedback is most appreciated! I am really struggling to improve as a writer, so any concrit would also be most welcome.


	5. pasts that echo back like vengeance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sandor inflicts a kiss, and receives one.

  

_“And where there is no Echo there is no description of space or love. There is only silence.”_ (Mark Z. Danielewski)

  

The path to what was left of the winter town is winding, and the wind blows cold and stark in comparison to the warmth and closeness of Sansa’s room.

Sandor barely felt it; he was warmed by his anger, his nettling embarrassment. The black stone and cobble of Winterfell soon gave way to frozen mud—or mostly frozen, as he discovers, sinking a boot in the sucking grime.

He growls, he curses too loudly—earns some looks from two men passing, as he pulls himself free. They see his face, and know better than to laugh.

_Fuck it all._

What the fuck was he doing here in the fucking frozen wasteland of the North, anyway? Other than scaring little girls and beating little lordlings.

Sansa had still been frightened of him—no. She had not been frightened. She had been disgusted, had come to her senses. Couldn’t even bear him outside her door.

He was no good here. In the Brotherhood, Sandor had just been expected to stay alive, and to fight. He should go to the Wall. He should go across the narrow sea.

 _Should have died long ago,_ he thinks.

When the winter town’s alehouse had been named the Smoking Log, it had probably been to put to mind the warmth of a hearth. And maybe it had, before the Boltons came. Now, it was still half-burnt, with the new wood still harsh against what char could be saved. Still cold inside, even with the fires burning, a pathetic remnant of what already had been a pathetic place.

But he’d be buggered if he’d spend any more time in Winterfell tonight.

He had spent some evenings here already; the barkeep knew enough not to speak more to him than was necessary, and would usually start pouring the red into the cup as he entered—as he does now. Sandor grunts thanks at him, drops enough coin on the bar to let the man know he’d be here for some time, and that his cup shouldn’t go empty.

 _Sansa Stark’s coin_ , he thinks, and drows the thought immediately. The wine’s taste is too sweet, too cloying—it reminds him of mulled wine in glasses and hopeful smiles of young women.

_What did that bloody girl want from him, anyway?_

The winter town wasn’t far enough. But it would have to do.

Sandor finds what passes for a table in the back of the alehouse. He hasn’t drunk like this in some time—hasn’t had a reason to, he realises—and it is several cups before he even stops to examine his surroundings.

It’s more crowded tonight than he has ever seen it. The alehouse may have been burned and sacked with the rest of the town (and still smelled unpleasantly like smoke and rot) but winter had come, all swirling ice and death, and the northmen with it.

Still, no one throws him more than a glance. That he sees, anyway. The other patrons either knew who he was in Winterfell, or in King’s Landing, or both. Suited him fine, any or all.

At least, no one does more than glance or mutter till he is well drunk.

“Clegane?” a man says. He is a northman, dark-haired and pale, and old enough to know better to approach him. “Sandor Clegane?”

“You from the keep?” Sandor says, and takes a deep draught.

“No.”

“Then fuck right off.”

“Don’t think I will,” the man says, setting his own drink down on Sandor’s table. He has a friend with him, Sandor sees, another northman, hovering behind him. Both had the nervous righteous sheen in their eyes of drunk men with something to say.

The timid friend pipes up. “A Clegane laid waste to—“

“Aye,” Sandor interrupts, “a Clegane laid waste to your town, raped all the women and children, pulled apart all the men, burned anyone left alive inside their houses.”

“So it was you,” the sitting man says.

Sandor laughs blackly; the men do not share his humour. “That was my brother, Gregor. It’s an old story, and I’m tired of it. Go bore someone else.”

The sitting man sneers (or tries to; through the haze of too much ale, it is more of a grimace).

“What are you doing here, Hound?” he says. “Go back to the Lannisters. Or, no wait, they won’t have you, will they? What’s left of them. You betrayed them and ran, like a coward. And now we find you here, eating out of Sansa Stark’s hand.”

“More like her lap,” his friend guffawed.

Sandor takes another long drink, doesn’t acknowledge them. He had few pleasures in his life, and he usually knew when to savour them.

“Yes,” the northman leered. “Heard she took a liking to using dogs. Guess she uses them to fuck her now too.

His friend finds this jape endlessly amusing, making obscene howling noises between laughs.

“Tell me,” the northman said, leaning forward, “is there even anything left of her cunt?”

Sandor grins. He could be good for something, here, he realises. What was left of the bloody Hound could give both the men and himself what they want, here.

He stood, knocking his bench back and throwing aside the rickety table. Even drunk, the men dodged quickly. They had been hoping for this, and they raise their fists.

Sandor sways forward with a punch, missing on purpose—best these fools think he was drunker than he was, to lure them into his reach. It was only a probable subterfuge, he realises—he still swings wider than he planned and took a little longer than usual to recover, which gives the two men a chance to round close.

They land blows on his side—his back, his kidneys—and the pain shoots, yes, and his breath catches, but pain is an old friend.

 _That’s it_ , he thinks, _nice and close_.

He turns and steps forward, and he can see from their faces he is faster than they would have guessed, for a man his size with a lame leg, and he feels tremendous satisfaction as he lands a square blow against the second, younger man’s nose, which crunches and spurts against his knuckles. The man falls back against the toppled table, spurting blood and keening.

The remaining man draws his sword.

 _Good_ , Sandor thinks. He falls back as if in fear, grimacing.

The man swings his sword at him in a wide arc.

Sandor dodges. He catches the man’s sword arm by the wrist with his right hand, jerks the arm forward to provide more leverage before he pushes a merciless blow into the back of the man’s elbow with his left hand, shattering the man’s sword arm with a wet crack, bending it backwards and bloody.

The sword drops and the man screams. He falls to the floor.

Sandor feels something has resolved inside him; he feels _calm_ for the first time since he walked out of Sansa’s carved door.

Calm, and blackness too, a familiar one—and he breathes, and the rest of the room comes back into focus.

He kicks the fallen sword over to its gasping owner, and walks over and leans to take some silver from the man’s purse—paltry of course—and adds it to his own, which he dumps on the counter.

Sandor shrugs at the unhappy man behind the counter, who steps back. “He drew first,” Sandor rasps. “Apologies.”

He does not linger; as he is far from unknown, if there are to be consequences they know where to find him.

The black night air on the way back to Winterfell was so cold he felt he could taste it, against the copper tang of blood and salt of sweat in his nostrils, and the ringing of screams in his ears. Sweet and sharp, it was, his own counterpart to Sansa’s bright citrus and the slick sound of silk, and almost as delicious.

Sandor meets no one on the way back to his quarters. At least, none make themselves known. His body and hand ache and his head still buzzes unpleasantly, and it is in this violent and familiar haze that he can rest.

 _We take what we can in this life_ , he thinks, before passing out on his bed, still clothed. _And sometimes it is even what we want._

_After a fashion._

 

_***_

When he answers Sansa’s usual summons the next morning, she embroidering another little wolf piece so fiercely and so intently he thought she might pierce her fingers through.  He can hear the needle puncture the fabric, and the pull of the thread as it is pulled and tortured into its clever and precise little design. It does nothing for his aching head.

At his arrival she looks up; her face is tense, and flushed. She wears a heavy dark dress this morning, her own kind of armour.

He stands before her, already glowering in preparation of her unhappiness.

“You said once,” she says, “that someday I’d be glad of the hateful things you do.”

“And I was right,” he says, pointing to the Stark colours he wore. “You are.”

She flushes further. Her mouth is tight as she speaks, and she worries her needle at her slim thumb. “And _yet_. I’ve had to spend my morning providing coin to the tavern and your victim’s family. I’m not a Lannister; I don’t have the gold to sprinkle over the world to absolve all my sins. I suppose I foolishly hoped it would be evident, even to you, that behaviour acceptable at King’s Landing is not acceptable in Winterfell.”

“I’m not going to beg forgiveness for defending myself, or you. Never did that in King’s Landing either, to be sure.”

“If infection sets in, he will not live, and my already-controversial man will be the one who killed him.”

“And if he didn’t want to die, he should have chosen his opponents more carefully,” Sandor says, smiling with bared teeth. He cocks his head conspiratorially, his black hair falling forward and away from his scars. “Or are you only happy for the hateful things I do as long as you’re the one telling me to do them, _little bird_?”

The sarcastic endearment provokes the reaction he wants. “You think—” Sansa says, too loud, before taking a long breath.

When she continues, her voice is low and quiet and intent. “You think I don’t know the things they say? About me? About Jon, about you, about Arya, about any of us? I cannot afford to give them any credence through any sort of attention. And you cannot either,” she says, looking back down at her swork suddenly, “not if we are to—not if you are to—“

“To what?” Sandor growls. His face is hot under his scowl. Fuck, he didn’t need to be chastened by Sansa fucking Stark, of all people. He was _glad_ he had done all he had done, the lot of it.

He continues. “I have _no idea what you want from me_ , girl. I defend you once, and you’re asking me to pull off your dress,“ and at this she goes blotched and white, and she checks again to see if the door is closed—“defend you again, and now it’s too much. Or,” he leers, “are you just angry I didn’t finish the job, strip you naked?”

The same cold flicker of hate and anger ripples across her face, as he saw with her when she spoke to Joffrey—and that does hurt him, even though he tried to provoke it.

In a new life, he is finding, old roles can be hard to give up, to say nothing of old desires. Sandor still only sneers.

“I suppose I will have to be more clear with what I ask you,” she finally says, primly. “And, as you represent my family, I will ask you to act with more decorum and foresight.”

“Aye,” he says, and the bitterness has receded. “For now, I represent the Starks. Or what little is left of them. You’re going to have to deal with the fact that they don’t see you as one. And even if they did, you’re still just a woman.”

He does not mean this unkindly. At his words, her shoulders slump, for a fraction of a moment. She holds his gaze. In her face all he sees is fatigue. She finds something in him that seems to steel her, though, and she recovers herself.

“Go find Lady Arya, Clegane,” Sansa orders, her voice too cool now, too pleasant. She returns to her embroidery. The needle flashes silver as does the thread, and her stitches, even in her trembling fingers, are exquisite and precise. “There is something urgent I must speak with her about. And you will not speak to me like this again, even if—”

She bites her lip; she is biting back pain.

Sandor finds that he wants to reach out, to touch her smooth cheek and say—well. Something, certainly.

Instead, he stands still.

“Go get Arya,” she repeats.

Sandor growls some kind of assent, feeling unpleasantly and not unfamiliarly like a chastened pet, and strides out, trying not to let her see him limp.

His leg, it aches terribly this morning.

 

***

 

The blessed younger Lady Stark isn’t in the keep. Isn’t in the glass gardens, in the stables, the mews, the godswood. Isn’t fucking anywhere.

The more Sandor searches, the unhappier he gets with always-absent always-furious little Arya Stark. He doesn’t ask anyone if they have seen her; he appreciates the solitude in the search, if not his ultimate goal.

And he doesn’t want to be mistaken for some kind of beleaguered septa.

 _Stupid girl_ , he thinks, _always lurking, always anxious her rage would drive the rest of those left to her away for good_. Always trying to prove she is quicker and sharper than anyone else—something her older sister realises only provokes attack. Arya still thinks skill and fury will protect her, that she can be protected at all. Will make it so she needs no one to watch over her.

 _Is that what you’re doing?_ , he remembers the blonde Lannister woman saying, scornfully. _Watching over her?_

_Watching over the both of them now, maybe._

Or so he told himself.

These thoughts snap at his heels, as he crunches through the Arya-less courtyard.

There is more activity in Winterfell than usual; even the sun seems slightly brighter and Sandor can feel it on his skin. He mistakes a passing young woman for Arya more than once. Many girls up here could be her twin, with her same black hair and sharp eyes and strong step.

Sandor only scares one of these imposters by grabbing her arm irritably and pulling her to him, before realising his mistake. He lets her go with a muttered apology, and she scurries off, casting back a dark look.  After that, he reminds himself to make _sure_.

Harsh little winter things, all of them, these northern girls. Would not be considered much to look at, down in King’s Landing, none of them, he supposes, although he could never seem to understand all the passing fashions of what was considered attractive. Teats and cunts and asses never seemed to change.

It was thought best for women to be small and meek and fair in King’s Landing, he reflects At least, those were always the most expensive ones at the brothels, and the prizes of any raid or capture. Himself, he had never been too picky; just like slaking a thirst, having a woman was. And bar a few short and ugly incidents in his youth, he had always bought their time and their cunts fairly.

The women here, who tended to be taller and darker and plainer than down south, all looked fine (more than fine, lately, it had been a long time) to him. He thinks idly of taking one standing, against the stone wall of the keep she now leans on , once he sees she is no Stark.

His time here with the pretty little bird—and especially last night—has provoked more than anger. He is feeling more and more on edge; he can almost feel the proximity of any passing soft sweet girl on his skin. He hadn’t yet been to the brothel in the winter’s town, but perhaps it was time, before he did something else he would regret.

Fuck, where was the blasted Stark bitch, to take his mind off these things. Around bitter and familiar little Arya, he would not have to wrestle with such urges. Just wrestle with her, no doubt, to get her back to her sister.

He spies her as he walks the perimeters of Winterfell’s walls, just outside the protection of her home.

Arya is standing still, a little ways from the walls, facing the snowy fields and black woods outside. He cannot see her face, and she wears a dark and simple dress (like her sister, today), but she is holding her damned pinprick of a sword outstretched, pointing down.

If any on the wall notice their strange and silent returned Lady—and they do—they keep their stares to a minimum. At least around Sandor.

Sandor looks out at her and frowns. Arya Stark would destroy herself like this. And soon.

That is, if he didn’t kill her for being so gods-damned hard to find.

He growls to himself, begins the descent down and out to where she stands.  Closer, he sees she is closing her eyes, arms outstretched and listening, keeping unnaturally still.

(One morning he had found the little wolf water-dancing, or so she called it. In his mind’s eye she is still a devastated little girl with fierce eyes too big for her face, still water-dancing. And the little bird, she is still gasping in fear and pain on the floor of Joffrey’s court as the Kingsguard pull down her clothes and he gives her his cloak—she is trembling on her bed as he stands over her, knife to her throat. She is weeping on her bedroom floor and he pulls off his cloak.)

(She is standing before him, facing away, and he pulls down her pretty dress.)

Arya doesn’t move a muscle, though she must hear his determinedly even trudge through the snow. The wind has swept it into treacherous piles and depths, here, and he must walk cautiously.

“What are you doing, you fool girl,” he calls, when he’s close enough to speak.

Arya holds her unnatural stillness a moment longer before sighing and relaxing, coming back to life. She turns to face him unhappily. Her hair is tied up, so it does not whip in the wind as his does. “I am trying to remember how it was.”

“How _what_ was?” Sandor rasps, annoyed as always at the vague distant world she seems to inhabit, all alone. When he catches up to her, stands and folds his arms.

“Winterfell. Or no, maybe, just me.” She turns back to the woods. Her voice is soft; she is not speaking to him, exactly.

The sky now has become white again like the snow, and only the black treeline and black stone seems to break it.

“I think, sometimes,” she says, and her voice is strangely light, the cadence oddly pitched, edging almost on hysteria, “that I was never Arya Stark at all. I think sometimes I never will be again, not really.”

He makes a sound to indicate what he thinks of all her idiocy.

She laughs, and he is surprised to find he is relieved. “And why is that strange, Hound?” she said, throwing a bitter grin at him. “Or no, you’re not the Hound any longer, are you?”

“Wouldn’t know. I don’t wander in the waste like an idiot trying to think about my own blasted name.”

Pain flickers across her thin face. She looks sad; she looks her young age. “How did you do that?”

“Do _what_.”

“Stop being the Hound. Give up all your anger. All your hate. Give up who you were and become someone else.”

He scowls.

“Fuck, girl, what sort of question is that.”

She sighs, turns back again to the forest.

“Look, you mad little wolf-bitch” he says, not unkindly. “You’re Arya Stark. I know because of all the time I’ve spent saddled with you. Like now. I’m to bring you to your sister. She wants to see you, said it was—“

“Arya Stark,” she interrupts. “You know, I remember telling my father I would never live as a great and noble Lady. I remember telling him, that wasn’t me. But I don’t remember what I thought was. I feel like I’m trying to fit into old clothes, that were maybe never mine to begin with.”

She bites her lip; her face twists into sadness, anger. “I shouldn’t have come back,” she says. Sandor sees tears in her still-large eyes. “I should never have come back here. He was wrong. He was so wrong.”

Sandor curses under his breath. _Could none of these idiot girls ever be normal_.  Never mind who “he” was, she was talking about.

But ghosts like her father and monsters like his brother were always easier to deal with than the living. That, at least, he understood.

“Old clothes, eh? That dress does fit a mite too tight on you,” he leers, to goad her and break her out of her reverie. (His tools to do this were, he understands, limited.)

It works. At least, she lets it work. She grins at him, looks him over contemptuously. She has grown, but she isn’t even near as tall as even her sister. “Could still beat _you_ in it.”

“With that child’s blade and those tiny arms? I’d break all of them.”

“I’d beat you in no time at all. Have you on the ground, even.”

He barks a laugh.  “Prove it.”

She grins, feral, and it is the Arya he knows. He finds himself glad of it; he finds himself grinning back.

She steps toward him to take her stance, takes a moment to close her eyes and breathe, and raises Needle; he scoffs at her and unceremoniously draws his own sword. He’ll have to be careful not to make good on his threat; his sword is practically the size of her whole body.

Arya moves first, quick as a striking snake, thrusting her blade towards him, to put him on the defensive. He bats her away with the flat of his blade and her eyes widen and then narrow; she is trying to get a precise sense of his strength versus her own.

They clash their blades at first, close up, getting used to the weight of the other’s weapon, and what is appropriate force so they do not wound the other, and so Sandor does not damage Needle. She is quick, but unused to fighting in snow, and she almost stumbles a few times when her feet sink into deep patches. Still, Arya adapts astonishingly, and after a few moments she has him sinking down as she lures him forward.

Arya is small and agile, to her advantage, but Sandor is surprisingly fast for his size. They circle, back and forth, and for some time they both pleasantly occupy their own favourite world, of steel and strength and harm.

At first she feints and dodges, gauging his reaction time—he surprises her and meets her every time.

When he first clatters Needle out of her grasp, she winces and shakes her hand before smiling in pleasure and picking her blade up for more.

“Like getting beaten, do you?” he says.

“I’m not getting beaten, I’m _learning_ ,” she smiles, and leaps to his side to attack once more.

Their fighting styles are at odds—Arya’s slender blade and small frame is best for short close strategic  thrusts, and complicated footwork; Sandor’s blade for sweeps and blows, and his large frame for overwhelming by force, and they must both adapt to the other.

This does not take long. They already know each other well—Sandor’s brutal pragmatism, Arya’s clever viciousness.

Arya is only half-heartedly aggressive at first, but what works once on her does not work again. He must admit, she is a formidable little warrior, for such a small thing. He lets her get a hit in. (So he tells himself, anyway.)

At the blow, something seems to _switch_ in her—in her eyes, her face. And then Arya goes on the offensive. She is so fast, and so relentless, and manages to land several blows in quick succession.

Sandor is faced with the humiliating thought that up to this point she was _holding back,_ and that even after seeing her fight, he has underestimated her.

At one point he slashes and she actually kicks up to his chest to knock him off balance.

He recovers before she can attack. “Where did you learn all this again? Your mummer’s troupe?” he snarls.

“You wouldn’t believe me. You’d call me a bitch,” she says, and dodges, “and a liar,” she thrusts, and he blocks.

“Aye, so speak the truth.”

Arya backs away, breathes.

“The man who saved me in Harrenhall,” she says, before stabbing forward suddenly—Sandor is taken off guard and must scramble to defend himself—“the real killer,” she continues, as their blades met. “He was a Faceless Man, of the Faceless Men of Braavos. To him I was special; he promised to kill someone for me, any one person,” she says, and  lands a cut on his wrist, “for saving his life and told me I could learn from him, if I followed him. After I left you I followed him to Braavos, to the House of Black and White. He taught me all the ways to kill. He taught me how to change my face. He—he loved me.”

Sandor scoffs and she takes advantage to jab Needle at him, piercing his sleeve. He bats it away, scowling.

“What,” Arya asks, laughing, “it’s easier to believe I’m some kind of assassin than a man loved me?”

“It’s all of it the ripest of shit,” he says, “Can’t choose just one part.”

“Just so,” she says.

“So,” he continues, and he is breathing harder at their exertions, “why didn’t you stay with your beloved killer?”

Her face is dark, momentarily void (mostly) of anger—but then all the life comes rushing back.

“I didn’t want to become Faceless,” she admits. “It was too confining. I came back to Westeros to find my family.”

“No, you didn’t.” He lands a blow, hitting her hip with the flat of his blade, and she hisses in pain.

“No,” she says, “I didn’t. I came back to Westeros to finish my list.”

She spits every statement like a challenge, holding his gaze and still grinning.

“You are such a fucking _liar_ ,” he laughs.

“Told you.”

“You told me you’d have me on the ground,” he says. “And here you are too scared to even dance closer to my reach.”

“You’re not very good at goading me, Hound. You never were, were you? What did you try last time?” Her voice is light, her attacks and footwork delicate and unstudied, but her eyes are narrow and intent. “How much you enjoyed slaughtering butcher’s boys? How much you wanted to fuck my pretty sister? I know at least some of that wasn’t a lie.”

He grits his teeth. _Little bitch_. “Why did you come back to Winterfell, then?”

Her mouth twists but she recovers quickly. “It was a mistake. I stop at Winterfell, but only for a little while. I am going to King’s Landing to finish my list. I will kill Jaime Lannister and steal his face. I will kill Cersei and steal hers, and then I will kill the Mountain.”

“My brother is dead.”

“Not what I hear,” she says wickedly, and lands a blow on him. “But don’t worry, Sandor, I’ll take care of him like you never could.”

He curses. This is not welcome news, that his brother still lives, and he is annoyed that she deployed it effectively. He’d have to get her close, get her confident. She is faster, but he is stronger.

“So you learned all the ways to kill, eh? How would you kill me?” he asks, and swings his sword so she must leap out of his way.

Arya smiles again, regains her footing and position. Cold winter girl. More a baring of teeth. Almost inhuman, again. “I’d change my face to a lovely one. Play the part of a young and innocent girl, in distress, in desperate need of your strength. Like my _pretty sister_.”

They are not playing anymore.

“Jealous of your sister, are you?” He backs away, makes her come forward.

“No. You hit me, Sansa says you kissed her. It seems the same thing, to me.”

“Like I said,” he growls, “jealous of your sister?”

She leaps at him, sneering.

At that seeming miscalculation, he knocks her over, laughing. She is sprawled in the snow, Needle thrown from her.

His triumph is short-lived.

She sweep kicks him down, moves to straddle him, angling her weight and limbs such that he cannot easily rise.

“You want to know how I’d kill you? I’d kill you like this, _dog_ ,” she hisses.

Sandor unbalances her as she draws her knife, manages to rise. He grasps her by her ribcage with his huge hands, his thumbs under her small full breasts she has not bound today.

“That’s because you _are_ a young and pretty girl, you stupid thing,” he rasps, and runs his thumbs over her breasts, not sure whether his words or actions would enrage her the more.

She puts her knife to his throat.

He grabs her wrist holding it tightly; she is faster, but he is many times stronger than her. A _nother lesson she’d do well to remember._

She is sneering, spitting curses.

 _All this rage. All this hate._ He knew it well; he missed it.

They would both have to give it all up if they were to not consume themselves; but he was half-eaten away already, and she almost gone.

Sandor laughs, holds her tighter, pressing the small of her back to press her against him. And there was a part of him that delighted in it, an echo of the Hound that still slavered, that delighted in the fear and confusion and disgust and interest in her wide grey eyes and lovely face as he ground her hips into his.

He doesn’t want _her_ , not like _that_ , he doesn’t even want her lovely body. And he doesn’t want harm to come to her, not real harm—but he does want something from her, he realises.

Maybe it is for her to have killed him all those months ago.

Maybe it is something else.

Whatever it is, it is not what he wants from her sister.

Arya struggles against him, cursing him, scrabbling her feet in the snow and exposed grass but he has her thighs pinned by his arms so she can’t kick him, and one hand on her torso so she can’t head-butt him.

“Fucking dog,” she says, scornfully, “stupid fucking dog, pretending to be a knight, pretending you’re any different from the first time we met you, when you rode down and cut a little boy in half at the command of a king who you were too frightened to protect, when it was _you_ that was in danger.”

He growls, thinks about choking her, thinks better of it. “Settle down, little bitch, and maybe I won’t tell your brother and sister what a little faceless monster you’ve become.”

“Idiot. I was lying.”

“You can tell them that, then.”

Arya stops struggling; her expression goes innocent and confused. “Why are you in Winterfell, Hound? Pathetic thing, you think you’ll carry off Sansa into the sunset. She already turned you down once; and you follow her like a poor broken pup, all hope and need.

“You are jealous,” he croons, “aren’t you? Jealous of your pretty sister, who everyone loves more than you. Well don’t you worry. You can start being wanted for your pretty cunt too. I’ll even kiss you if you like.”

She grins. “But I still won’t be my sister, Hound, and you will still be burned. And I still won’t give you my hatred, that you seem to miss so much. And I still won’t kill you—put you out of your misery—even if you beg me.” Her face is bright but her voice is dull, distilled vitriol. A murky poison, dripping.

He laughs blackly. “And you’ll never save any of them. You’ll never see any of them, ever again, even if you leave right now.”

“Fuck you.”

Sandor leans forward  to press his closed mouth to hers for a few sweet and angry seconds.

There is no affection, no lust in his small assault—it is a show of dominance.

 _She was right_. He wants her to hate him.

Arya spits on him as he pulls away. “You’re not changed at all, Hound,” she says. “ _But I am_.” She pulls back to head-butt his nose. But before he can react, she sees over his shoulder and smiles.

The girl grins terribly at him, and leans into his ear. “Anyway,” she says. “Looks like I’ve _already_ fucked you,” she adds under her breath.

Sandor is suddenly cold, and he does not think it is just because the snow has soaked them both through.

He lets go and Arya pivots off him to stand, and to pick up Needle. Sandor stands more slowly.

Sansa is walking towards them briskly wearing a wearing a heavy cloak; her hair is half-undone and swirling in the wind. She is visibly upset; but she must have been before she set off for her hair to be so loose.

She would have seen everything.

“There you are, Arya,” Sansa says coolly, stopping short of the mismatched sparring partners. “I’ve just received word from Jon; he will be back as soon as his horse will carry him. News of the dragons is everywhere; and we as the North will have to take immediate action.”

“What kind of action?” Arya asks.

Sansa glances at Sandor.

“That remains to be seen. Sandor, this will undoubtedly mean new additions to train, if you would like. Arya, please stay inside the walls where it is safe. Bolton deserters still roam.”

“I’ll kill them,” Arya says simply.

“Please respect my wishes in this, “she says. It is not a request. “I would not lose you so soon after I found you. Even if you are evidently so _very anxious_ to be lost.” Sansa’s voice was short and sharp.

Arya seems to struggle to find words. “I want to help,” she finally says.

“Do you, Arya?” Sansa says, without feeling. “If you do, you might realise that to help our family doesn’t just mean doing only whatever you…you _damn well please_. Think on that, I pray.”

Her sister’s annoyance and contempt seems to sting; Arya opens her mouth to say something. “It will be nice to finally see Jon,” she snaps, and stalks past them both to return inside Winterfell’s walls.

Sansa directs her attention to Sandor.

“Does it still bring you so much joy, to try and frighten little girls,” she hisses, so that Arya would not hear.

Sandor starts to speak to Sansa but she has already turned to follow her sister inside.

The only sound outside the walls is footsteps through snow, and the wicked wind driving in the cold deeper.

 

***

 

Sandor stands outside Sansa’s door. It is almost morning, and he has been there all night. He knows every sullen stone on the walls now.

She had not been at dinner, Sansa, nor her younger sister. Sandor doubts he will see much of Arya in the future, and feels a stab of angry satisfaction (not regret, never). _Good_ , he had thought. He wasn’t her brother or her father or her friend. Just someone who had used her for her name. Her sister knew how that could be.

He grabbed one of the attendants, asks where he can find Lady Stark.

“She’s retired for the evening,” he was told shortly, as the woman jerked away. “She is not to be disturbed.”

 _Well then_ , he had thought, _I won’t_ disturb _her_.

There is a young man guarding outside when he had reached her rooms; Sandor tells him to fuck off with a snarl. The young man obeys, although not without an impertinent glance. Not worth following up on now, Sandor decides, as he takes his place.

Sandor Clegane stands and keeps watch over Sansa.

Not his initial impulse of the evening. He wanted to kill something. He wanted to find a girl and pay her and fuck her. He wanted to drown himself in sour red. Instead he stands, and waits, and thinks.

Sandor had never worried over-much about his actions before; he had hated them as much as anyone else but he had been so good at them, found such a grim masochistic satisfaction, he had never questioned if he could do anything else. Thoros, damn him, the fucking red priest hadn’t been wrong about him.  He wanted to help now, instead of only hurt.

Serving the Lannisters were almost easier, incestuous inbred fucks that they were. All they were were grasping and cruel. He never wanted anything from any of them.

But what did he want with the fucking Stark girls, anyway, either of them?

Arya, who isn’t as good of a liar as she imagines, or maybe Sandor wasn’t as dumb as she thinks. Little wolf. He wanted her to hate him again, because it was easier for them both. He wanted her to know that she couldn’t fight the world and win.

Sansa, who knew this already, who held on to all the wrong truths about herself and the world she lived in. Sansa wants to survive, instead of avenge. She wants to thrive, playing by rules that were taught to her by the cruel and the cold, the predators who were circling around her even now. The darkening sky, the cutting rush through dying trees—like the beating of great wings. All of the world around them an ill omen.

Sansa Stark. Fuck it. Sandor is used to people being impressed with his size, his strength, his skill, and being terrified of him all the same, great ugly angry thing he was. And she was the one who had stroked his face, and who had sang to him, who had been grateful to him. Who had thought he could be something better than he was. He wanted to help her. He wanted to be near her. He wanted her to smile at him, he knew, and hated himself for it.

He had always known Arya had a black poison inside her that would devour her sooner than later. Corrode her from the inside out. He feared Sansa did now, too. Both girls had black pits inside them, like he did. But neither could give up their names or their selves or their bodies, like he had, to excise it.

All night, he stands. He listens to her write. He listens to her light a fire; he listens to her gasp in her sleep in the throes of a nightmare.

In the morning, he listens to her wake and sing softly to herself, and only then does he think of leaving. But he could not be anywhere else. He will leave, he thinks, when someone brings her food.

Perhaps Sandor couldn’t apologise—but he could do this for the little bird, protect her in her dark little cage she had locked herself in, that her world had locked her into.

But he must have dozed, or been lost in his thoughts, because he is disturbed by the door opening slightly. He tries too late to walk away.

“Sandor?” Sansa says. She has slept badly; there is darkness under her eyes, and she is more simply dressed than usual. “How long have you been out here?”

Sandor shrugs. He is deeply regretting an enormous amount of his choices which led up to this moment, including this actual moment. “Figured if you didn’t know, it wouldn’t distract you.”

“Not all night and morning?” She looks so deeply moved by this, despite the fact she told him not to.

He shrugs again. “If you say so,” he says. “Sansa… I—“ he tries, but curses instead of finishing the thought. “Been here too long,” he says, and starts to leave.

“I’m glad you’re here, actually,” Sansa says. “One moment.” She retreats into her rooms and he hears rustling. When she returns to the door, she hands him a letter, cream paper folded neatly and sealed with grey wax.

He takes it from her hands, careful not to brush her fingers. The paper is very fine, heavy and thick.

“Keep this for me,” Sansa tells him. “I want to be certain before I send it. I think if I must ask you for it, it will keep me from acting rashly.”

Sandor sneers. “This for Baelish? Maybe I should burn it.”

“Maybe you should,” she smiles.

For a moment they only look at each other.

“Your idiot sister, she—“ he starts to grumble.

“I am sorry—“ she starts at the same time, and then laughs.

“Sandor,” she says. “About yesterday. I know we are all of us struggling to transition into new roles. We are all of us trying to find our place, here, and in relationship to one another. And sometimes our old selves resurface. I know this.”

Then she cocks her head. “About my little sister, though.”

He frowns, some choice words already on his tongue.

Sansa smiles at him. “I know you two tend to feed off off each other, which is mostly fine, as I am happy for her to find a friend. But,” she says, and starts retreating into her room and closing the door, “otherwise, please play nicely with my little sister.”

Sandor growls. “I wasn’t—“

“Don’t worry, I’ve told her the same thing about you,” she grins, and winks (she is very bad at it) and shuts the door. Only after a moment, does he smile.

Before he leaves to sleep, he can hear her singing softly.

 

*******

 

Sansa finds him later on the wall, in the snow.It is evening and the darkening sky bathes them all in blue.

He is on watch duty—he assigned himself. He wants to be away from the keep and the girls. The snow is falling thickly, and the winter winds, here, they take his breath away. There is a dampness, too, that cuts through his clothes. In King’s Landing he could swath himself in armour and rage and blood. Here, he was only himself. Whoever and whatever that was.

He is supposed to be watching for Jon Snow. He thinks, though, on Arya and her bright past she tries to get back to. Sansa and her bright future she moves toward.

And he, Sandor Clegane, only ever knew the now.

(The fire was still burning in the brazier and he could still feel the toy knight in his hand. The little bird still wept; she still sang.  )

(The fire was still burning, in another man’s life. Or was it the same shit one? These things, they echo and repeat. In his head, in his heart, the fire never stops burning, in the brazier, on the Blackwater. The green hell never stops in the Blackwater. He was still on the hill, broken and dying; his friend the septon still swung from the rafters. The grief never stops at all and it can never be clawed out, never be killed.)

(They were nothing alike; they were too much alike. He and his brother, ugly echoes of a howling rage. Sansa and her sister, their dead parents mirrored into the present. Sansa all afraid. Arya all bereft. The Hound and the Mountain. Bird-girl, wolf-girl. Sad girls, stark girls. And he—he was—)

“Hello, Sandor,” Sansa calls. She approaches him, appearing to materialise out of the flurrying snow.

“What are you doing out?” he asks, too harshly.

She smiles, and pulls her furs closer. “Looking for either of my siblings, I suppose,” she says, “although with this snow I can barely see my own hand in front of me.”

“I’ll keep watch, little bird,” he mutters. No longer a songbird, though. A frozen little snow dove. An icy little kestrel.

Sansa ignores him. She leans against the wall, looking out into the blurring dark with him. “I was quite angry with you yesterday,” she says.

“Not surprising,” he shrugs.

“But I did not expect to feel—resentful,” she muses.

He barks a laugh. “Ha. I’ll find you a sword and spar with you too, if you like.”

“And will you kiss me too?” she asks sweetly, not missing a beat, and then laughs at his scowl. “Do not fear, Sandor, I saw you. You were trying to frighten her, since she can now best you. Somehow. And to be honest, and perhaps unkind, she could use some frightening.” She bites her lip. “Arya’s time away has proven very beneficial, it seems,” she adds, thoughtful. 

“There is something—“ but he stops. Not his place. “Your sister has secrets.”

“Yes, I know she does. And so do I, and so do you, and so do we all. What are we to do about that? We can only keep moving. We can none of us rest.”

She is looking down now, dreamily. “I jumped off of here,” she says. “With Theon Greyjoy. To escape. We only broke a few bones. And then we ran from the dogs.”

Sansa is leaning too far forward for his tastes, and he reaches with both hands to pull her back gently.

“Careful, now,” he says.

She closes her eyes tight till her dizziness passes, and smiles. “Thank you. I suppose you’re not used to it,” she says, and her smile is tighter. “You’re the one who does the hurting.”

Sandor bites the inside of his good cheek. He knows what she is saying. “Not like that,” he grunts.

She curls her lip. “Not like that at all?”

“Not for a very long time.”

She looks into his eyes, searching, furious.

“And never again,” he says, and means it. “I am not my brother.” What she speaks of, it was no satisfaction to him, no strength, it was the part of him that was like Gregor, the part of him that loved it. No, he did what he was told, and no more. Like always.

“You once told me killing was the sweetest thing there is. You told me men and women and children, they’re all meat and you’re the butcher,” she says, reproachful.

Sandor sneers. “You kept mistaking me for a knight. I wanted you to learn, to know. And you did. Even without my honesty. I—It went much harsher for you, than I—than I would have wanted.”

She shrugs. “And much, much worse and more harsh for untold other men and women. Do you still believe all those things you told me, back when you _wanted me to learn_?”

He feels a great weight on his chest. “I don’t know.”

“The terrible Hound,” she says, “here before me, but unsure of how violent and loveless the world is. I won’t be believed.”

“No hound,” he murmurs, hoarsely. “And no butcher—not anymore.”

Sansa’s face softens.  “No, I suppose you’re not. Still a hard and brutal man, though, with a bad temper and little foresight, too. But loyal, and kind, sometimes. And you protected me, and my sister.” She sighs. “ All this time, and I’ve not talked to you about what Jon might ask of you.”

“I’m not here to be Jon’s man,” he says, quick and rough. “Not here for your sister either. Thought I made that clear.”

She looks at him strangely. “I could ask you to come with _me_ this time, you are saying, as we move forward. Only me.” She breathes, and her voice is hushed and fascinated. “You could be mine. My shield, and mine alone.”

He bowed his head; now it was he who couldn’t look at her. “Only yours. If you want.”

“I do want. I want very many things. I want, Sandor I want so much, so badly, all I can have and can never have, it sears me sometimes, I—“ and she gasped in a breath, as if she was trying to put out some inner inferno with the frozen air.

She reaches her hand out to touch his face, his scars, and he flinches.

“I won’t hurt you,” she says softly, and her cool little hand goes round his neck, and she pulls him down.

She kisses him, lightly, exploring, at first, a brush of lips. And then she parts her lips and her kiss is not chaste; she presses her body against him, she hums as if in relief. There is a slowness, a tentativeness to her, that he doesn’t understand--but the shock soon wears off.

Sandor jerks back. “ _Don’t need your fucking pity_.”

She laughs, short. “You think I do this out of pity?”

“Then why?”

“Why did you offer to take me away, that night? Why didn’t you kiss me, though I closed my eyes and waited?”

 _Oh_ , he thinks. Oh.

She continues. “I wonder if it’s not all the same answer,” she says, maddeningly, unhelpfully. 

Sandor snorts. “Told you you’re not my price, too.”

Her sly grin tells him nothing. “But what about what I want, Sandor? You should know, I suppose, that sometimes I think I have no pity left,” she says, and moves toward him, putting her hands on his chest, inviting his arms around her waist.

It is dark and the snow is thicker now and growing worse; it would cover them as long as anyone wasn’t too close.

He holds her. He imagines he could feel her little beating heart, through her furs, his mail. Little bird, thinking she was so cold. “No pity, eh?” he murmurs into her beautiful hair. “Then marry your sister off against her will. Then betray your brother to those who would kill him. Then turn me loose on your enemies and let me have my way.”

“I am far more interested in having my way,” she says, and looks up, looks at him, and waits.

All right, he thinks, he’d give the stupid girl what she thought she wanted. See how she likes it.

And Sandor with his ruined face and all his rage, he gives in, to the both of them.

When he kisses her—her lips cold from snow, her warm tongue as she kisses him back, echoing his own desire, her small moan of pleasure and the way she presses against him, runs her hands up to his broad shoulders—he is lost. He is hers. Even though he does not understand why she is doing this, or why she is inviting him to do this. But for a moment there is no future, there is no fire that burned him, there is no snow she fell into, there is only them.

The snow blankets them in white, in silence.

He is the one who pulls away first. He searches her face, desperate, for the disgust he expects.

She only smiles. She seems serene. “Thank you Sandor,” she says, “I appreciate your…your _willingness_. When Jon comes, I will tell him you belong to me.” She begins to turn, but pauses. “And I hope you’ll act accordingly.”

He nods, and she leaves him again to watch but Sandor does not register anything in his sight for some time. He feels warm, he realises, and his mouth twists.

 _Did every dog,_ he thinks _, so yearn to be owned? And feel such a rush of pleasure at a master—a mistress’s—claim?_

Arya, clever lovely little Arya, damn her, is right—he is only a dog, who hasn’t changed at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sandor should be careful who he follows, as Sansa (and Arya) have very, very big plans for themselves.
> 
> (Haha oh man Sandor Clegane is just the worst. Sometimes when I write him and Arya and how they like to torment each other as a comfort sometimes I think of that Arrested Development quote “the feeling was friendship, but neither had ever experienced it.” They do care for each other; they’re just both really bad at it.)
> 
> I think the little triad of killers have been defined re: themselves and re: each other firmly enough, and they can commence with the business of revenge or victory or death or chocolate chip cookies or whatever they’ve set their little hearts on. I am going to start also writing scenes from Arya’s and Sansa’s point of view, because Sandor is not always the most observant or understanding and doesn’t always pick up on what the girls are going through or doing or feeling—much less what their real agendas are. In fact, he often doesn’t. He can't figure himself out half the time. As for all of them, trauma is a weird and idiosyncratic thing, and they all deal with it differently. 
> 
> However this will have to wait about a month—I’m condemning myself to a strict writing hiatus until my thesis is turned in, and I return from a trip to the States. 
> 
> In the meantime, please let me know what you think, and I hope you enjoy it!


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